According to the USPS, the penalty for not having your list meet Move Update standards will begin January 4, 2010.  The penalty will be 7 cents per piece for Standard Mail mailings that do not comply with the Move Update standards. Move update provides a tool for customers to ensure that their message gets to the right addresses. The Move Update requirements took affect on November 23, 2008 but the USPS has not applied a penalty currently, for noncompliance, but will begin the penalty phase on January 4, 2010.  It is my understanding that the penalty will be on the entire mailing and not just on the bad addresses.  Your list can be cleaned up in several ways but I recommend the NCOA (National Change of Address) update.  We offer the NCOAlink update at Burns Mailing & Printing, Inc. and it is free to nonprofits who print and mail with Burns. For more information on NCOAlink update call or email me, Phyllis Burns.  865 584-2265 and email phyllis@burnsmp.com.

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Saturation mail is a low-cost alternative to targeted advertising in your local market. To encourage volume growth, the United States Postal Service has created an incentive program for mailers who increase their saturation Standard Mail letters or flats volume between 5-11-09 to 5-10-10. This increase could result from growth or your total mailed volume or from growth within a defined market area.

How do you qualify?  You must submit a letter requesting participation to your district USPS manager of the business mail entry no later than August 1, 2009.  The request must be made by a person  that is an authorized official of your company or nonprofit organization.

You must demonstrate saturation mailing activity in both the 2007 and 2008 calendar years, with a minimum of six saturation mailings in the 2008 calendar year. You must pay postage through a permit imprint advance deposit account at the time of application and must have a functioning Centralized Account Payment System (CAPS) account before 5-10-2010. Each permit imprint advance deposit account must be established at a postal facility having PostalOne! capability.

At the end of the program, a per piece credit to the approved mailer’s CAP account will apply for the verified saturation mail letters and flats volume that exceeds the previous year’s volume. The incentives are:

• Standard Mail saturation flats: 4 cents per piece
• Standard Mail saturation letters: 3.7 cents per piece
• Nonprofit Standard Mail saturation flats: 2.4 cents per piece
• Nonprofit Standard Mail saturation letters: 2.2 cents per piece

Printing and mailing companies may not request participation on behalf of customers for which they prepare mail. Franchisees that are not separate business entities may not apply for the incentive independently of the parent organization.

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The USPS recently sent a reminder that all letter-size booklets and folded self-mailers mailed as presorted machinable letters must meet the same physical standards required for automation letters.  On September 8, they are changing the construction and sealing standards for letter-size booklets.  They encourage mailers to review the April 11 Federal Register notice, “New Standards for letter-size booklets,” on Postal Explorer at pe.usps.com (click Federal Register notices) to prepare for the change.

Well that is all I have of boring postal notices for today.  Hope the summer is anything but boring for you.  A beach trip with our Grand Son Sam is in the future this summer.  Now where did I put that sunscreen.

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