Jul 8, 2008
Summer Camp and the US Mail
By Scott Gerschwer, Megaspirea
In the pantheon of missed opportunities and strategic blunders none may approach that of the USPS for their failure to market mail to young people. The basic attitude—that the last two generations have been weaned on electronics and would never be interested in hard copy communication—is defeatist, wrong-headed and costly beyond imagination.
Memo to Postmaster Potter: use the Internet to make the mail fun. We all love getting mail; just use the power of the desktop computer and the worldwide web to take the pain points involved in making mail away and, hey presto, your diminishing volumes may pick up again.
I have said before, and will reiterate now, that this is a marketing problem. Hire me and I’ll tell you how.
A small example: my eight-year old nephew went to sleep-away camp last weekend. My brother packed him onto a bus and off he went. If all goes well he’ll be gone for seven weeks. In his knapsack was a folder with pre-addressed and pre-stamped postcards and envelopes, including one or two to my house and a few addressed to his grandparents, my mother in Brooklyn and my sister-in-law’s parents in Florida. He was instructed to write at least one letter a week to someone.
Of course no one is sure that he will. One thing I do know is that he will get mail, if he hasn’t already. I know this because as soon as my brother emailed his camp address to us, my ten year old daughter sat down at the computer and wrote him a letter. She had fun with it—using all kinds of different fonts and inserting photos into the text and using “paint” to goof up some photos to send to him. She composed a four page letter, printed it and handed it off to my wife to send. My wife, presumably, knows where the envelopes and the stamps are. I myself do not.
A few years ago (too many to countenance, in my opinion) I took part in a program that had middle school kids write letters to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. We supplied the paper, the envelopes, and the postage and the kids supplied the content. Some drew photos some asked questions about war and some just wished them luck. The kids seemed to enjoy it once they got started. One of the sponsors of the program, who was in the US Army and had fought in the first Gulf War, told me that when she was there getting any kind of mail was a highlight of her day. She assured me that the soldiers would write back.
Kids at camp and soldiers in far away lands understand the value of getting mail.
One final thought: I chaired an XPLOR session during the On Demand Conference in Boston and one of the presenters was Andy Percival, the Managing Director of Sureprint, LLC, who flew in from England to do the session, attend a few meetings, and fly home. I met Andy through my colleague, Karl Schumacher, who had done some work helping Andy get the company organized. His session, which I hope to have him do again for posting on XPLOR.org, was all about the value his company had offered to small and medium sized companies in the UK who had hundreds or even thousands of invoices to mail and used his service, www.pdqit.com/
Sureprint offers a web to print solution but has some unique capabilities that allow them to generate large batches of material to the posts. They have managed to take the pain out of mailing invoices for hundreds of companies. The result is a greener, less costly, more manageable mail process for their clients, a savings of both time and money and a revolution in mail. Putting Sureprint and Megaspirea together is a no brainer and we’ve been discussing bringing the solution here to the US market.
Once we make mail easier, more cost-effective, and better for small and medium businesses we’re going to market it to teens, college kids, and pre-teens using social web sites and basic marketing. If you want to partner up give me a shout at scottg@megaspirea.com
Working together, we can save the US Postal system and make mail cool again. And then we’ll all be happy campers.