Last week, the National Postal Forum (NPF) met at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee, with the largest crowd it’s seen in years. Around 3,000 people came to spend the week exploring trends in mailing and shipping, and dive into a wide range of educational sessions about getting the most out of mail and packages sent through the postal service.
That said, there was some frustration over the lack of response to the mounting frustrations over postal rate increases, with USPS executives not touching on it at all during the keynote addresses. Off the record, a number of direct mail printers attending noted they are getting increasingly frustrated with the way it’s being handled, as they are seeing their margins shrink to the point where they are starting to wonder how much longer mail will even be a viable marketing channel. Despite its stellar performance in any campaign, if it’s too expensive to put a piece into the mail stream, even brands that believe in the channel will walk away.
