As you've heard over the past couple of weeks, the United States Postal Service plans to close 3,700 post offices across all 50 states. These closures shouldn't come as a huge shock seeing that the volume of first-class mail has dropped 28% in the past four years. People are just not using the postal service like they used to. Instead of sending letters, we're emailing. Rather than paying our cable bill via regular mail, we're paying it online. Some people even receive their bank statements online.  

With an $8.5 billion dollar debt last year and a $2.2 billion debt just in this last quarter these cuts had to be made. How will these cuts affect direct mail marketing and are there more cuts ahead?  

According to Jerry Cerasale, Senior VP for Government Affairs at the Direct Marketing Association, the closures should have very little impact on mail volumes or the direct marketing industry. "The service standard might change because of the loss of postal offices and so some mailings might take a day longer to get there," he said.  

If this "service standard" does change, we may need to start planning direct mail campaigns based on the delay. Will it really only be a day longer for a direct mail piece to get to its destination? That's something we'll have to figure out when the time comes.   

Other than the fact that thousands of people will most likely lose their jobs over the closures and that we may have to plan our direct marketing programs more precisely, there is a positive for marketers.  

As noted above, total mail volume has dropped 28% in the past four years. Lower mail volume could mean your direct mail piece will have a greater chance of getting noticed. Think about this in your personal life. If you get 10 or more pieces of mail you're likely to sort it out and quickly realize what's "junk" and what you want to keep. On the other hand, if you only receive three pieces of mail, you're more likely to look at each piece more carefully. With less mail going out you're more likely to receive a better response rate rather than competing with other direct mail pieces.  

It will be interesting to see how the closing of these U.S. Post Offices might affect both our everyday and business lives in the coming months. We'll keep you posted!