Postage
Pay your taxes, then get ready to pay more postage
Get out the erasers and prepare to rewrite that marketing budget because the USPS made it official today that the rates for their market dominant services will be increasing as of April 17, 2011. Perfect timing, everyone will already be upset over the amount of money they or their company have to fork over to Uncle Sam and then BAM!, a little salt in the wound courtesy of the USPS. Do not be too alarmed however, the average of the increase is a mere 1.741%. We have broken down the new rates by First Class Mail (1 oz pieces) and Standard Mail (under 3.3 ounces) and have come to some interesting conclusions.
First was that the USPS either has gained quite a bit of efficiency regarding Flat processing or they realized they came down a little heavy with the increases last go around. In either case the current increase for Flats averaged only .38% across First Class, Standard, and Nonprofit. The average increase for First Flats was actually -.12% or better put the average cost is less than it was 2 years ago. It appears that the increases is minimal across all of the automation categories, which leaves the non-auto categories bearing the brunt of the price hikes. This is good news for mailers who currently are preparing their mail as automation compatible. The worst part of the rates is that the discount for mail prepared for the NDC will decrease by $.01 or $1 per thousand. This one does not make sense since mailers are taking on the financial burden of preparing and shipping this mail to the specified facility, which saves the USPS processing and transportation expense. Again it is only $.001, but it goes against the concept rewarding work-share by the mailer. The discount for SCF mail will remain the same as before.
The following links will give you my breakdown of the old rates vs. the new rates and the various increase by percentage. The complete table of new rates is available on the Postal Explorer website.
Please weigh in with your thoughts regarding the increase and as always fmi is here to help assist mailers take on this increase with the least possible damage to your marketing budget.
This just in from the USPS…price increase on the horizon
Release No. 10-064
Postal Service Proposes Price Changes
WASHINGTON —The U.S. Postal Service Governors recommended increasing the price of a First-Class stamp 2 cents to 46 cents and authorized the production of a pane of four evergreen tree branches as the newest image for Forever Stamps. The price of a postcard would increase 2 cents to 30 cents.
The Postal Regulatory Commission must approve the recommended price changes. The increases would not go into effect until January 2, 2011. It would be the first stamp price increase in almost two years.
Holiday Evergreen Forever Stamps will be available to the public in October at the current rate of 44 cents. Once purchased, the stamps are valid literally forever – despite any future price changes. No additional postage will ever be needed.
Faced with plummeting mail volume traced to the recession and increased use of the Internet, the Postal Service is projecting a deficit of nearly $7 billion for the next fiscal year. Despite eliminating 1 million work hours and reducing expenses by more than $1 billion every year since 2001, a budget gap remains.
The proposed price changes, if approved, will raise about $2.3 billion for the first nine months of 2011. Postmaster General John E. Potter said he does not want customers to bear the burden of dramatic price increases. Instead, Potter announced in March that pricing would be one in a series of solutions the Postal Service is pursuing to become financially sound.
“There is no one single solution to the dire financial situation that the Postal Service faces,” Potter said. “These proposed rate adjustments are moderate and part of a fair and balanced approach to insuring mail service for all Americans well into the future.”
Other actions outlined in March included changes to delivery frequency, restructuring prepayments of retiree health benefits, creating a more flexible workforce and expanding access to products and services to places more convenient to customers.
The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.
Complete details of today’s filing can be found on usps.com. No prices will change before 2011.
Update on 5 Day Delivery–New Website
The U.S. Postal Service has launched a website on usps.com to provide information to all customers about its proposal to implement a five-day street delivery schedule. The Postal Service proposes to end regular Saturday mail delivery to street addresses as part of a comprehensive plan to ensure that it can continue to deliver affordable service to the American people. Post Offices will remain open on Saturdays.
The website, www.usps.com/communications/five-daydelivery has a planning guide for businesses and household customers, and answers to frequently asked questions.
USPS summer sale, look for your letter!!
Release No. 09-020 Summer Mail Sale Returns
Customer Loyalty to Be Rewarded Again in 2010
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Postal Service did something for the first time last year, and it was so successful, they’re planning to do it again: launch a summer sale.
The 2010 Summer Sale is scheduled to run July 1 through Sept. 30 and will provide a 30 percent rebate to eligible mailers on Standard Mail letters and flats volume above a predetermined threshold. The threshold will be five percent over each participating mailer’s volume for the same period in 2009. Invitations to participate in the sale will be sent to customers in early March.
“The 2010 Summer Sale is our way of rewarding our most loyal customers and demonstrates that we value their business,†said Robert F. Bernstock, president, Mailing and Shipping Services. “We expect the 2010 Summer Sale to provide as much excitement about direct mail as the sale did last year and to generate between 300 million and 1 billion new mailpieces.â€
Nearly half the 960 customers enrolled in the 2009 Summer Sale increased their mailing volumes. This resulted in approximately 1 billion incremental pieces during the sale period, producing a net revenue contribution of $24 million.
“Direct mail works, and our customers know that,†said Bernstock. “That’s why we will continue to invest in programs that promote the health of our customers’ businesses as well as our own. We very much appreciate our customers’ business, and we will compete aggressively for their advertising and promotion dollars in this highly competitive marketplace.â€
To be eligible to participate in the 2010 Summer Sale, a company must have mailed 350,000 or more Standard Mail letters and flats between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2009. Approximately 3,525 customers are expected to be eligible to participate in the sale, representing 67 percent of the Postal Service’s Standard Mail volume.
The 2010 Summer Sale is a component of a broader pricing strategy that creates incentives to grow and retain volume. It was one of many solutions discussed this week at a Washington, D.C.-stakeholder event in which Postmaster General and CEO John E. Potter addressed hundreds of customers, business partners, employees and the media during a presentation: Envisioning America’s Future Postal Service. At the event, Potter outlined an aggressive plan of cost cutting, increased productivity, and an array of legislative and regulatory changes necessary to maintain a viable Postal Service.
The 2010 Standard Mail Summer Sale is subject to approval by the Postal Regulatory
How Would You Make Over the U.S. Postal Service?
From Inc.com
With bankruptcy looming, the U.S. post office needs a major fix. We asked Inc. 500 CEOs how they would approach the problem
By Darren Dahl | Oct 1, 2009
Everyone agrees that the U.S. Postal Service could do better. With bankruptcy looming, there’s a consensus that big changes need to happen, most involving cutting staff and scaling back services. But what if we could unleash the creative ingenuity of entrepreneurs to improve the post office? We asked Inc. 500 CEOs how they would approach the problem. Here are some of their responses.
The USPS needs a digital mail system. Your physical address could become your username, with the post office allowing you to turn off physical delivery of mail, like banks have done with bank statements. Recipients could choose to have their physical mail delivered to their home mailboxes for archiving once a month. By creating and owning the digital postal service market, the USPS could greatly reduce costs and become profitable, useful, and relevant for the next 100 years.
Aaron Houghton
Chairman and co-founder, iContact
Durham, North Carolina
The mail carrier could do pickups and charge a monthly pickup fee, just like FedEx and UPS, while keeping the letterbox as a free service. Simply adding a $25 monthly fee for businesses that want a daily mail pickup would be something that many businesses would jump on. If you had even 20 percent of the small-business market, you could generate an extra $60 million a year. If the USPS also cut retiree benefits by 40 percent and operating costs by 10 percent, along with raising rates by 5 percent, it could turn a $7 billion loss into a $4 billion profit.
Sandeep Walia
CEO, Ignify
Cerritos, California
Raise the rates on first-class mail. It is the postal service’s core, and it has a monopoly to deliver it. This system actually works and is the most profitable part of the USPS. When the USPS’s first-class rates are compared with those in other industrialized countries, though, they are grossly underpriced. A similar-size letter mailed in the U.K. costs 65 cents versus 44 cents with the USPS; in Germany, it costs 78 cents. Using 2008 statistics, each one-penny increase in the first-class mail rate would add over $900 million in revenue. If you raise it by 5 cents, you add another $4.5 billion.
Harry Geller
CEO, SoDel Concepts
Bethany Beach, Delaware
When it comes to shipping small packages, the USPS is cheaper than its competitors and offers comparable and sometimes even faster delivery times. However, since it doesn’t offer reliable tracking, we pay a premium to ship most of our packages with UPS. If the USPS tracked packages as well as UPS, it could capture a lot of business.
Sean Harper
Co-founder, TSS-Radio
Chicago
The USPS is an out-of-date concept. I don’t think my 18-year-old son has ever written a letter. For him, the post office is about as relevant as cassette tapes, rotary phones, and broadcast television. The USPS doesn’t need to be fixed — it needs to be sold off.
Tony Paquin
CEO, Paquin Healthcare Companies
Celebration, Florida
Copyright © 2009 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
Inc.com, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195.
Delivering Something Extra
From the New York Times
By Stuart Elliot
Published: September 23, 2009
Since 1907, United Parcel Service has been delivering packages ordered by consumers. Next week, the company plans to deliver packages they have not ordered, in a test of an effort to expand into direct marketing.
United Parcel Service will begin testing its direct marketing service on Monday.
Beginning on Monday, U.P.S. will experiment in five major markets with a service it calls Direct to Door, giving advertisers and retailers a chance to provide offers and product samples to U.P.S. customers. The marketing materials will come inside small boxes labeled Direct to Door Paks, and will be delivered to customers along with merchandise they actually ordered.
The test, to run through Oct. 2, is intended to gauge whether there is interest in having U.P.S. serve as an alternative to marketing mail delivered by the United States Postal Service or by companies like Valpak.
If Direct to Door goes forward, the added revenue could help United Parcel offset declines in demand for its mainstay package delivery service since the recession started.
In July, U.P.S. reported its sixth consecutive quarter of lower package volume in this country. The decline in the second quarter was 4.6 percent compared with the period a year earlier, which Bloomberg News described as the worst result since United Parcel went public in 1999.
“I wouldn’t say it was developed as a result of the economy,†said Lisa Lynn, marketing director for new-product research and development at United Parcel in Atlanta.
Rather, she said, it stems from “some opportunity we saw at the heart of what we do every day working off our delivery network.â€
The test is also meant to see if U.P.S. customers welcome unsolicited packages or dismiss them as some new type of junk mail.
One effect of the economy is that “people are very receptive to offers right now,†Ms. Lynn said.
An experiment in figuring out how to better aim traditional, tangible marketing materials at consumers may seem quaint when so much of the buzz along Madison Avenue is about aiming virtual pitches at them online.
But direct marketing remains a lucrative business. According to the Direct Marketing Association, it accounted for $176.9 billion in ad spending last year in the United States — 52.1 percent of the total, by the association’s tally.
“We did some focus-group research and it really indicated that people were receptive to receiving offers from U.P.S.,†Ms. Lynn said. “What we heard was, ‘If U.P.S. brings it to me, it’s not junk.’ â€
Still, the company is taking several steps to try to ensure that a Direct to Door Pak is received more like a gift than another application for another credit card.
For one thing, the offers inside each box are intended to be special rather than “mass offers distributed through other channels,†Ms. Lynn said.
For another, no Direct to Door Paks will be delivered unaccompanied by packages ordered by that household, she said.
And the boxes will not bear the addresses of the recipients, Ms. Lynn said. Rather, they will carry phrases like this one: “Inside are premium offers from some of America’s best-known brands.†They will also include a photograph of the familiar brown United Parcel truck next to the words “Delivered to you by U.P.S.â€
About a dozen companies — advertisers and retailers that use United Parcel to deliver orders to customers — are taking part in the test, Ms. Lynn said. They include the Finish Line; Men’s Wearhouse; Sephora; two Williams-Sonoma home furnishings brands, Pottery Barn and West Elm; and Zappos.com, the online retailer of shoes and housewares recently acquired by Amazon.
“It’s an interesting way to reach out to our customers and partner with one of our closest business partners,†said Aaron Magness, director for business development and brand marketing at Zappos.com in Henderson, Nev.
“We are an online retailer,†he added, “but we want to maintain a high-touch relationship with customers, constantly trying to find different ways to interact with them in whatever means they’re comfortable with.â€
Mr. Magness said he liked the idea that the boxes would not arrive “out of nowhere, from random people knocking on your door.â€
The offer to be made by Zappos.com during the test will invite recipients to “become a member of our V.I.P. program,†he added, entitling them to “free next-business-day shipping on every order.â€
United Parcel plans to deliver about 250,000 Direct to Door Paks in about 150 ZIP codes in Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, Phoenix and Washington.
Those chosen to participate in the test are “high-opportunity consumers,†Ms. Lynn said, meaning that they often order merchandise delivered by United Parcel Service.
“Our drivers have relationships with these people because they deliver to them frequently,†she added. “There’s a lot of trust in the driver and the brand.â€
Mr. Magness also cited the trust factor as a reason Zappos.com was interested in the test.
Ms. Lynn described the customers to receive Direct to Door Paks as ages 35 to 54 in households of two persons or larger and living in single-family, owner-occupied homes.
As for what the service will cost marketers, “I can’t go into specific pricing,†Ms. Lynn said, “but the pricing model is similar to other media.â€
The goal is for the cost to reach each 1,000 consumers — a common media measurement known as cpm — to be “comparable or less than an equivalent piece of direct mail,†she added.
Junk mail delivers a sense of satisfaction
From The Chicago Tibune
By
Steve Johnson
Tribune reporter
September 22, 2009
E-mail Print Share Text Size There’s still time to improve my lawn. Public radio needs me to renew my membership. A “quality closet” can be mine for just $495.
And the Lyric Opera, of course, has another great season of songs in foreign tongues and “projected English translations above the stage for all operas,” information clearly worth sending in duplicate.
I’m supposed to hate this stuff. It kills trees, which contributes to global warming, and weakens the grip of the screws attaching my mailbox to my house wall, which leads to stucco failure.
I’m supposed to hate it for constantly nagging me: Buy this, sign up for that, donate to us. And above all, I’m supposed to hate it for having the temerity to try to make me change, in however small a way, the way I lead my life.
But the truth is, except for the rare, genuinely deceptive stuff — credit-card solicitations designed to look like bills — I don’t mind junk mail.
In a “Seinfeld” episode, Kramer once bricked up his mailbox to fend off a catalog onslaught. I open my box to all who care enough to write or, more accurately, stuff an envelope with printed material.
It’s sad psychological comfort, I know, but far better is the day with two credit card offers and a Jiffy Lube coupon than the one with no mail at all.
And in some ways, a Sierra Trading Post catalog is more satisfying than the latest Esquire.
Instead of hanging onto it for a month in hope of finding time to read the carefully written articles, you flip through it in five minutes while waiting for dinner, then toss it on the recycling pile, secure in the knowledge that companies continue to make more hiking shoes than can be sold at full price.
A two-week vacation recently allowed me to revel, upon return, in the full glory of my junk mail.
There, between the rubber bands, were 15 catalogs, four more than the number of magazines, everything from Athleta to West Elm.
There were 25 actual stuffed envelopes of solicitation and such, compared to just 12 pieces of what you would call meaningful mail: utility bills, a library overdue notice, a car registration sticker.
There were another seven pieces on postcards, including, of course, a Bed Bath & Beyond 20-percent-off coupon (I picture cashiers there fainting if someone actually pays full price). And a once-local, increasingly pan-suburban newspaper I no longer subscribe to decided to take a shot and send me a copy.
All told, it was 4 1/2 pounds of clutter. And thumbing through it, opening a piece here, recycling one there, was almost as enjoyable as going through the “real” mail. Sure the junk mailers are after your money, but they’re only asking for it. An actual bill makes demands.
You’d think that junk mail is dying. Beyond the environmental complaints, there’s the relative economic efficiency of spam e-mail.
And although it’s true that last year, for the first time, direct-mail spending actually declined, it’s also true that it continues as a huge business.
I know the statistics (because I looked them up): U.S. junk mail accounts for almost one-third of all mail delivered in the world, and each American household gets an average of 850 pieces of it a year.
Households average 18 pieces of it a week, one survey found, versus one piece of personal correspondence.
I know that not enough people recycle their junk mail, and that direct marketers send out 36 pieces to get one response. I won’t argue that it is all overkill, the sign of a culture with too much disposable income, even now, and too little concern for the ways it chases that income.
But at the same time, junk mail is largely responsible for keeping the U.S. Postal Service afloat; without it we’d have another institution to bail out.
And without all the impersonal stuff around it, the one birthday card in that whole two-week pile wouldn’t have seemed half as special.
Plus, I would have had no way of knowing that I could run an 8K to help abandoned pets, that Clipper Magazine is not about ships or that Trader Joe’s is featuring spicy peanut slaw. Information like that is, literally, priceless.
sajohnson@tribune.com
BMW: Luxury Auto, Meet DRM
BMW is kicking the tires on a direct response campaign targeting luxury auto enthusiasts, turning to an often undervalued marketing platform as a means to entice Mercedes, Volvo and Audi drivers to come in for a test drive.
In a bid to draw likely buyers to their local BMW dealership, last week the New Orleans-based DRM firm Dukky began sending out some 25,000 mailers to premium vehicle owners in the Tri-State (New York-New Jersey-Connecticut) area. Upon registering for a test drive, the recipients of the direct mail material are presented with a $25 American Express gas card.
Participating consumers are directed to visit a unique URL, which directs them to a personalized activation site powered by Dukky. Once the user has registered for a BMW test drive, he or she can share the promotion via email or social networking sites. The digital activity feeds into a dashboard which reports back to the client in real time, thereby creating a database of purchase intent and user feedback.
Although the DRM strategy may seem a bit low rent for the likes of BMW, there are a number of advantages to targeting the mailbox. “BMW for years has been all about acquisitions, whether you’re talking email lists or traditional mailing lists,†said Scott Couvillon, chief marketing officer, Dukky. “By its very nature, direct mail is much more impactful than even the greatest email because it’s there and it’s tangible. Then you take the next step with the PURL and you’re getting feedback on an individual consumer level.â€
Couvillon added that Dukky’s ability to track the target’s subsequent interaction with the material, from signing on for a test drive to alerting friends to the offer on his or her Faceboook page, is what separates the initiative from the shills for garage door openers and pizza chains that clog the mails.
“We have no interest in dethroning Valpak,†Couvillon said. “Our technology allows a highly respected brand like BMW align itself with what is essentially an interactive coupon.â€
Consumers were also targeted by the specific brand of vehicle they currently own, said Erik Wennerod, vp, director of CRM at Dotglu, the interactive unit of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners. “Quite frankly, we wanted to go after each one of the 25,000 competitive vehicle owners with a message that was targeted to their demonstrated preference,†Wennerod said. “So for the Volvo owners, we went after them with a safety message. With Audi, it was tilted toward performance. With Mercedes, it was all about luxury.â€
The gas card works as an incentive to get prospective clients deeper into the purchasing funnel, down past the initial part of the decision-making process where people start talking themselves out of a buy. “For better or worse, they start to add practical reasons for not buying,†Wennerod said. “One of the advantages BMW has is, once you drive one, there’s a much more emotional experience that takes place. If we can get them to that step, the car takes care of the rest.â€
Wennerod expects activations to begin later this week, as the first recipients of the mailer begin making the jump to the online site. “One of the things we love about this is it’s essentially a turnkey approach,†Wennerod said. “Dukky was able to turn this around very quickly, from the DRM piece to getting the microsite online. It all went live literally just a few days before Labor Day, so we’re hoping to start getting the first round of feedback toward the middle of the week.â€
While the typical return on direct mail is less than 2 percent, Dukky’s marriage of DRM, online and social media allows the company to guarantee returns of 8 percent. And in the case of the BMW promotion, Dotglu’s exposure is minimal. “It’s a variable cost deal,†said Wennerod. “We only pay for the people who take the test drive. That’s a lot of upside.â€
Reader’s Digest Plans Bankruptcy Filing
From the New York Times
August 17, 2009, 2:00 pm
By Stephanie Clifford
UPDATE Aug. 17, 3:52 p.m. With comments from the Reader’s Digest Association chief financial officer, Tom Williams, and on the banks’ involvement.
The Reader’s Digest Association announced on Monday that it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its United States businesses within 30 days.
As part of the reorganization, Ripplewood Holdings, the private equity firm that owned Reader’s Digest and installed Mary Berner as its chief executive, will shed its shares and board seats, and existing debt holders will become the company’s owners. Ms. Berner will continue to run the company, and Tom Williams will remain as chief financial officer. The company does not expect to lay off any employees or close any of its publications, Mr. Williams said in an interview.
The value of the company will be much lower under the overhaul. Its debt of $2.2 billion will be reduced to $550 million, according to the agreement it has already struck with the majority of the banks. Ripplewood had bought Reader’s Digest for $2.8 billion in 2007 in a leveraged buyout.
“The bank lenders are taking a fairly significant haircut,†said John Puchalla, a senior analyst at Moody’s. While it was common for junior creditors to take a loss, for the senior creditors to take such a loss is “notable,†he said. “It’s certainly a lot less than the value the lenders viewed at the time of the L.B.O.,†he said.
Mr. Williams said a majority of its lenders had agreed to the terms of the restructuring, and the company expected to speed through bankruptcy, completing proceedings 45 to 90 days after it files, he said.
The filing does not cover its businesses outside the United States; it sells publications and products in 78 countries.
The company has lined up $150 million from lenders, through a debtor-in-possession loan, to help finance it through the restructuring, and will get $400 million more upon exiting bankruptcy, for the
total new debt of $550 million.
“Our banks are 100 percent aligned on the vendors that we choose and serve, so there’s no issue associated with paying any vendors,†Mr. Williams said.
That money comes from its new owners: J.P. Morgan, the company’s agent, G.E. Capital, Merrill Lynch, Eaton Vance, Regiment Capital Advisors, Ares Management, and Davidson Kempner. Although Ripplewood made an offer, “the offer from the lender group looks more compelling,†Mr. Williams said.
The company has an additional $100 million in cash on hand, Mr. Williams said.
The overhaul will save Reader’s Digest $65 million a year in cash-interest expense payments, reducing its annual payments from $145 million to $80 million, Mr. Williams said.
The company will continue to operate as usual once it comes out of bankruptcy, but with significantly less debt, Mr. Williams said. “No employees are going to be affected by this, there’s no-to-little
effect on our vendors, our operational performance remains very sound,†he said.
In the company’s most recent fiscal year, ended in June, its revenues, excluding the effects of foreign exchange, declined 1.4 percent, and gross margins and operating profit were flat with last year, Mr. Williams said. Additionally, ad revenue, which makes up about 9 percent of the company’s sales, were down only 3 percent from last year.
The magazine was founded in 1922, summarizing articles published elsewhere, and grew quickly. The company developed other titles, and, in 1990, went public.
The Reader’s Digest Association has been through a turbulent time in the last several years. In 2007, a consortium led by Ripplewood bought the company for $2.8 billion. Ms. Berner, a publishing executive, was installed as chief executive; her brother, Robert Berner, was then a managing director at Ripplewood.
But the company has lost money every year since 2005. The high debt load of the company had led analysts including Mr. Puchalla to downgrade its debt at the beginning of this year. In June, the company announced it was cutting the guaranteed circulation of the flagship magazine to 5.5 million, from 8 million, and decreasing the frequency to 10 times a year, from 12, along with focusing the magazine on socially conservative values.
Plunge in Credit-Card Mailings Slows
Could this be some good news for a change!From Brandweek
Aug 14, 2009
- Mark Dolliver
When the credit crunch took hold last year, it stanched the usual flood of direct-mail credit-card mailings to U.S. consumers. The subsequent meltdown of the financial system had its own restraining effect on such offerings. But now, a report from Synovate says the research firm’s Mail Monitor operation has detected a bottoming out in the volume of such solicitations.
In the second quarter of this year, says the report, households received 349.1 million credit-car offers in the mail. That’s 67 percent lower than the level of mailings in the same quarter of 2008. But it’s down just 6 percent from the level of first-quarter 2009. Some of the big mailers even increased their volume during the second quarter. Bank of America’s mailings were up 77 percent from the first-quarter-2009 level, and Citibank’s were up 65 percent. Noting that credit-card issuers have been growing less risk-averse than they were earlier in the recession, Synovate goes so far as to predict an “uptick” in card offers next year.
An earlier report from Mintel Comperemedia noted a stabilization (after two years of declines) in the number of mailings sent to households promoting mortgages and home-equity loans. But the nature of the offers has shifted, given lessons consumers have learned the hard way in the past year. Notably, direct-mail offers of adjustable-rate mortgages have “fallen out of favor,” according to Mintel’s analysis.
Of course, the fact that companies are making offers of credit cards and loans doesn’t necessarily mean people are taking them up on it. Polls during the past year have consistently found consumers professing their aversion to taking on more debt of any sort. Typical of the genre was a Gallup poll released last month (based on fieldwork in June) in which 46 percent of respondents said it’s “a bad time to borrow money,” vs. 17 percent saying it’s a “good time” to do so.
Subscribe
Recent Comments
- Adam Hartung, Chicago, IL on Are You Disruptive?
- Tweets that mention Why Direct Mail Will Always Be In Style | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Why Direct Mail Will Always Be In Style
- Tweets that mention Less mail equals more opportunity | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Less mail equals more opportunity
- Tweets that mention Direct Mail Scare Tactics… | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Direct Mail Scare Tactics…
- Tweets that mention Post Office Bailout… Not So Fast | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Post Office Bailout… Not So Fast