New Zealand Post battles electronic mail

The amount of personally addressed junk mail could double as New Zealand Post tries to find ways to arrest falling letter volumes.

The state-owned postal service is looking for ways to improve the quality of the household mailing lists that it sells to business customers who in turn use the information to send personalised advertising.

Letter volumes have been falling by up to 4 per cent a year for several years as people replace pen and paper with email and other electronic communication.

“The biggest single challenge we face is clearly the continuing use by customers of letters as a means of communication,” New Zealand Post chief executive John Allen said.

The best way to do that was to further increase the use of mail by business customers.

Mail’s share of the total advertising spend in New Zealand was just 8 per cent compared with just over 15 per cent in Australia and nearly 20 per cent in the United States.

“We have a relatively small percentage of the overall advertising spend in mail at the moment by comparison to other developed countries and our view is that there is real opportunity to grow that,” Allen said.

There had been good growth in marketing mail volumes in the six months to December which had helped to offset most of the decline in personal letter volumes, he said.

New Zealand Post will issue its half-year result to December 31 next week.

A controversial trial last month using four posties to record houses in Petone and Eastbourne that were in need of a repaint was aimed at tailoring a mailing list for paint company Resene.

The public backlash over the use of the trusted postie “snooping” on properties forced New Zealand Post to axe the trial, though the information was still sold to Resene.

But Allen said New Zealand Post must innovate in order to compete with electronic mail.

“Clearly we need to be finding ways to offer new services to our customers and to enhance the services we can provide,” he said.

Targeted mail cuts through the plethora of competing media clambering for attention, Allen said.

New Zealanders’ reluctance to use post codes had held back personalised direct marketing.

Whereas in most developed countries people were as familiar with their post code as their telephone number, New Zealanders had not caught on to the idea, Allen said.

Ask three people in the same street what suburb they live in and they will give three different answers, he said.

As a result 20 per cent of mail going into Auckland was incorrectly addressed.

While greater use of post codes would provide revenue to New Zealand Post through the sale of more accurate mailing lists, the upside for the public was an improved, on- time mail delivery service, Allen said.

Also as email took over from the written letter in daily communications, it had elevated the value of a hand-written letter.

Allen said he was receiving more hand-written business letters “because they are trying to differentiate themselves. It means more when it is a letter. It means more when it is by hand.”