August 2004

Direct Mail Trivia
The May/June 2004 issue of MAIL: The Journal of Communication Distribution quotes the Ambrose Printing Company's collection of facts about direct mail:

• The average dollar spent on direct mail advertising yields $10 in sales. That's more than twice the return on investment of television advertising.
• Direct mail is the 3rd largest budget allocation after magazines and newspapers.
• Non-profit organizations in the U.S. mail approximately 12 billion pieces each year.
• Half of all mail handled by the USPS is direct mail advertising.
• More than 50% of all recipients read direct mail immediately. And 40% of those find direct mail useful.
• Adding a premium or promotional product to your direct mail campaign can increase response rates by 50%.
• To raise funds for the Pennsylvania Hospital, Benjamin Franklin used direct mail.

And from his address to the New England Mail EXPO, May 26, 2004, Postmaster General Jack Potter says the USPS's consumer research proves America "still has a love affair with hard copy mail." Their studies found:

• 74% of direct mail is read by the recipient.
• 52% of households order products and services advertised in direct mail they receive.
• 21% of recipients have actually taken a direct mail advertising piece with them to the store.
• Twice as many households order from catalogs than from information received from the internet.

Military Mail Piling Up
Getting mail to our troops at war has always been a problem. But in 2000, difficulty in sending and receiving mail resulted in glaring inadequacies in military absentee voting. It's unacceptable that, while putting their life on the line far away from home, our heroes cannot get the morale-boosting mail from home they deserve, but it is inconceivable that they might not enjoy the very freedoms and rights they are defending.

The Department of Defense and the Military Postal Service are responsible for the logistics of military mail. But according to the Government Accounting Office, no agency has been assigned to resolve the problem of long delays and mounds of military mail that will never be delivered. The GAO reports that neither the DoD or the Military Postal Service has reliable means to measure the timeliness of mail delivery overseas. In fact, according to MAIL: The Journal  of Communication Distribution, Edward A. Pardini, deputy director of the Military Postal Service takes the stand that there is no problem with the current system.

According to Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times, in 1991, after Desert Storm in Iraq, the military burned tons of undelivered mail sent to soldiers. And one year ago, Air Force Times reported that undelivered mail destined to the war in Iraq, if stacked 10 feet high, would fill 3 football fields. And the absentee voting problems of the 2000 election have not been resolved as the 2004 election draws near.

News Poll
Send your vote to mailto:webmaster@mailCCI.com or vote online. Visit http://www.mailCCI.com and in the Interactive menu choose Today's Survey.

Do you have a friend or family stationed in the war zone?

____ Yes
____ No

We'll post the poll results here in next month's e-newsletter.
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Results of last month's poll: 

Will you vote in the upcoming November election?

52% Yes
48% No

See the results of other surveys CCI has conducted online at http://www.mailCCI.com/data/surveys.asp.

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