Question: What percentage of nonprofit solicitation mail is tossed without reading?

[] 5.6%

[] 13.4%

[] 31.2 %

The answer in a moment.

Here at global headquarters, our hunt for the eclectic range of esoteric-to-practical content for voracious Agitator readers never ends.

Consequently, this weekend I found myself reading Modes of Delivery and Customer Engagement with Advertising Mail, a report by the Postal Service’s Inspector General. Direct mail aficionados can download it here.

And that’s where I found the Answer: 31.2%.

That’s right. Today, nearly 1/3 of all nonprofit fundraising appeals are tossed away unread. Tomorrow those ‘tossed unread’ numbers could soar dramatically. This is the conclusion of the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service.

Let me explain.

As the Postal Service seeks to stop the fiscal hemorrhaging largely caused by a 25% drop in mail volume over the past 8 years (37% in the case of First Class mail), it is adopting many labor-saving strategies.

One of the areas of savings is to cut down on mail delivery to consumers’ front doors. The Postal Service says big money can be saved if delivery is made at curbside or in cluster boxes.

Here’s the reasoning.

Door Delivery: Mailbox is located by the front door forcing the postal carrier to leave their vehicle, walk to the house, deliver the mail and return to their vehicle.

Curbside Delivery: Mailbox is located at the end of the driveway or next to the street allowing the postal carrier to remain in the vehicle while delivering mail. But the postal carrier must still stop at each house/mailbox

.

Cluster Delivery: Mailboxes are grouped together at the end of a street or in one location for a neighborhood, allowing the postal carrier to deliver all mail in one convenient stop
.

Of course, direct mail folks are nervous about the effects of changed delivery methods on open, read and response rates. Enter the Inspector General and the resulting survey of the direct mail reading habits of 5,000 consumers.

The results aren’t pretty. Overall, mail recipients say they read and respond to 15% of the mail delivered to their doors, 8% to curbside advertising mail, and 4% to the mail that arrives in cluster boxes.

As I do in all matters postal I turned to the experts at PSI/PSI Digital to get the inside scoop. Here’s what Ben Harris and Darin Marks report.

• The worry about cluster boxes vs. door and curbside delivery comes down to ‘trash cans.’ You see most apartment complexes and other cluster locations have garbage cans right next to the mailboxes. Thus the concern over ‘toss before reading’ problem.

• This effort to control costs by centralizing delivery may actually cost the Postal Service more money as mailers cut back. A recent DMA report indicates that 79% of marketers sent mail in 2012, but the figure dropped to 50% this year.

• According to Ben Harris, the effects that potentially diminished volume will have on postal rates is unknown at this point. Nonprofit standard rates have gone from 9.9 cents per piece in 1996 to 16.1 cents per piece today.

• According to Darin Marks, who reached me from a postal conference, the USPS seems pretty intent on moving to the cluster box concept as quickly as possible.

Here are the estimated ‘toss before reading’ rates as reported in the Inspector General’s study.

As you can see ‘Donation Solicitation’ would appear to suffer, although not as bad as some categories, as one moves away from the door.

So, what to do?

Well, those into further study and tinkering might want to pick up on one finding in the IG’s report: In some regions of the country, First Class mail is not declining at all (Charleston, W.VA), and in other regions it’s down a lot (Dallas, down 61%). And mail use increases substantially with age and income.

Targeting Marketing has two informative and fact packed articles that readers fascinated by postal details will want to read. You can find them here and here.

As for me, I think the best advice in situations like this comes from my friend Denny Hatch of Business Common Sense, who greeted the Inspector General’s findings as follows:

“It doesn’t matter what mail recipients SAY or OPINE about direct mail. The only measure: Did the specific test offer to a specific list on a specific date bring in responses at an acceptable cost-per-order. If so you roll out. If not, you move on.”

What’s your take on all this?

Roger