Is centralized digital mail an idea that will gain some ground in the next couple of years? I think so. Of course digital postal delivery is nothing new, really. That's what email was supposed to be, right?

We all know how that turned out. Spammers and criminals quickly figured out they could get their unwanted messages in front of a huge number of people for almost nothing. And consumers started running filters and getting mailboxes on multiple systems, making it harder for legitimate businesses to be comfortable that critical documents were getting delivered and opened by the recipients. Email stopped resembling the traditional postal delivery system a long time ago.

The promise of digital postal delivery is a lot closer to the original roots - one single place consumers can go to retrieve all their mail - just like the mailbox out in front of their house. When tied to the existing physical postal delivery address, this makes a lot of sense. Compared to having to navigate and log into a dozen separate web sites to retrieve your bills, statements, or notices, a centralized digital mail box looks pretty appealing.

This technology has been around for a couple of years now. So why hasn't it caught on?

After you... Uh-uh you go first... Oh no - I insist...

I think it's a chicken-and-egg kind of thing. Consumers won't sign up for a digital mail box unless enough of their important documents are likely to be delivered there. And businesses won't pay to deliver to the digital mailboxes until enough consumers sign up. There doesn't seem to be an easy way for private business to break the impasse, though there has been some recent progress. Some large mail service providers have agreed to use digital delivery systems. But we're far from digital postal delivery becoming a normal way in which companies communicate with their customers.

Recently, Pitney Bowes, a major influencer in postal communications, has announced their own digital postal delivery system, Volly. While it is encouraging that an industry leader like PB has seen a value in the concept, multiple competing digital delivery systems defeats the purpose. Doxo and Manilla are two additional players in the digital postal delivery game. If I have to log into my Zumbox account to check some of my mail and Volly, Doxo, and Manilla accounts to see the rest, I'm likely to not use any of them and will just continue with paper bills. At least they will all be delivered to the same place.

Is it too late for USPS action?

I've long believed that the US Postal Service was the ideal provider of digital mail delivery. They enjoy a high level of consumer trust, an instantly recognizable brand, and they already have systems to route and forward mail, track it, and receive confirmations of delivery. Plus, they could extend their current position as an official mail delivery organization to the digital world. And there are likely to be a number of synergistic opportunities for linking the digital documents to physical letters, flats, and parcels.

Unfortunately, the USPS hasn't shown a great deal of interest in participating in something so revolutionary. Without USPS support or endorsement, vendors like Zumbox and Pitney Bowes will have to fight it out for the privilege of operating the surviving platform. Or they could merge. Multiple providers will not be able to achieve the combined adoption rates that would be likely had a single, official digital postal delivery strategy been designated. One of the greatest values to the mail recipient, central mail consolidation, is greatly diminished in an environment of competing digital postal delivery solutions.

Stay tuned

If you don't have a digital postal delivery strategy right this minute, that's probably OK. But it's not too soon to start getting educated or maybe even doing some trials with the existing technology. Print/Mail Consultants will be taking a closer look at the features and functionalities of digital postal delivery alternatives. Keep watching for announcements of some helpful guides and resources.

We're going to be watching closely as strategies develop and the vendors, the mailers, and the Postal Service decide what our mail delivery infrastructure looks like over the next 5-10 years. We'll keep you posted if we see some trends developing. And we'll continue to publish our opinions.