The US Postal Service will launch a b-to-b marketing campaign in September to promote the mail as an effective marketing medium for businesses, said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe at the National Postal Forum in San Diego on May 2. The organization is working with agency Campbell Ewald Advertising on the effort, which will include TV and direct mail components.
“The Postal Service hasn’t focused on promoting mail through significant advertising in many years,” said Donahoe. “It’s fair to say that we haven’t seen a great deal of industry marketing to support the value of mail, either.”
He added that the initiative will portray the mail as a “powerful way for businesses to reach their customers, especially when it’s used with other media,” and display its integration with technologies such as QR codes. The campaign’s cost will be included in the Postal Service’s existing advertising budget, which is more than $100 million.
“There are so many businesses that could start using the mail or use the mail more often if we simply told them about the value of the mail and lowered some of the barriers to implementing their marketing strategies,” said Donahoe, adding that 75% of businesses don’t use the mail for marketing. “That represents a huge opportunity if we make it easier for businesses to get started and stay in the mail, and easier to measure on investment…The people who make marketing decisions in America’s businesses have to get just as excited about the creativity of a mail piece as they do about a digital offering, or a TV or radio ad.”
The Postal Service, which ran a net loss of $8.5 billion in its 2010 fiscal year, will test a postage-back guarantee to attract large marketers this month. The initiative will offer the “Mail Works Guarantee” to businesses that spend at least $250 million per year on advertising.
