Tag: North America

eBay sellers concerned over shipping rate changes

Posted by | Apr 15, 2007 | |

Seventy-seven percent of eBay and online sellers are concerned about higher shipping costs when new USPS rates go into effect in May, and 26 percent are concerned that postal tools they use may not be ready when the changes go into effect, according to a recent AuctionBytes survey.

Most respondents reported they sell on eBay (98 percent); 21 percent sell on Amazon, 17 percent sell on Half.com, and 23 percent sell on their own ecommerce site or storefront. Other sites included Yahoo, other online auction sites, bookselling sites, classified sites, online antiques malls, and other.

Eighty-four percent of survey respondents were aware that US postal rates were changing on May 14th. The majority of respondents (68 percent) said the changes would have a net increase on their total postal costs, and 20 percent did not know how the new rates would affect their total postal costs. Ten percent said the new rates would not have an effect on their total postal costs, and 3 percent said the new rates would have a net decrease on their total postal costs.

In a question about which postal tools they used, 73 percent of respondents said they use eBay/PayPal postal tools; 18 percent use Endicia; 7 percent use Stamps.com; 5 percent use features provided by auction-management vendors; 4 percent use Pitney Bowes; 2 percent use Dymo; and 20 percent use other tools.

Half of the respondents (51 percent) use automated tools to help shoppers calculate postage costs on their items, but 55 percent did not know if those tools would calculate the new rates when they go into effect; 35 percent said the tools would calculate the new postal rates, and 10 percent said they would not.

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Small financial services using e-mail to compete: Mintel survey

Posted by | Apr 14, 2007 | |

Many large financial services firms are experimenting with a blend of direct mail and e-mail marketing to communicate with their current customers and merchandise their new products and services. In contrast, many smaller financial services have turned to e-mail to attract new customers with acquisition offers.

According to Mintel Comperemedia, a competitive intelligence service in Chicago that analyzes direct mail, e-mail marketing and print media, several smaller companies are emerging as more frequently tracked entities in the e-mail marketing arena.

“E-mail marketing has been able to serve as a more affordable option for smaller, lesser-know companies that need to reach new consumers,” said Carmen Curran, analyst for Mintel Comperemedia, in a statement. “Major financial services companies continue to take advantage of e-mail as well, but they have stronger resources to market through direct mail and other key channels. They are also concentrating more on marketing to current customers through e-mail rather than acquiring new ones.”

Mintel Comperemedia said that as the e-mail sector evolves, companies such as Metabank in the banking sector and First Premier Bank in the credit card sector have been identified as key players, flooding consumer mailboxes with acquisition offers and promotions. However, on the direct mail front, these companies are distributing a significantly lower share of offers than their larger competitors.

As reported March 13 on DMNews.com [http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/direct-mail/40362.html] in the direct mail category, the top 2006 overall mailers for acquisition financial services direct mail pieces were Chase (1.7 billion), Capital One (1.2 billion), American Express (1 billion), Citibank (980 million), and Bank of America (920 million). While many smaller companies turn acquisition efforts to e-mail marketing, larger companies are opting for e-mail marketing to cross-sell their products and communicate with their customers about their services.

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Postal Service awards contract to protect employee personnel records

Posted by | Apr 13, 2007 | |

The U.S. Postal Service is implementing a program to convert all paper personnel folders to electronic folders, which will transform the way employee information is stored, retained and retrieved, ultimately enabling postal employees to have 24-hour access to the content of their personnel folder.

The Postal Service awarded a contract to SOURCECORP BPS, Inc. to convert the files from paper to electronic as part of the Electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF) program. SOURCECORP BPS, Inc. has extensive experience scanning and securing banking, medical and government documents.

Paper employee records are currently maintained in many postal facilities throughout the country. Once these records are scanned, employee records will be maintained in a secure central database. The eOPF program supports employee self-service, the Human Resources Shared Service Center and disaster recovery.

The migration from paper to electronic media is one more successful phase of the PostalPEOPLE project. PostalPEOPLE, the largest project of its kind anywhere, involves the replacement of existing outdated Postal Service human resources technology with a fully-integrated system to streamline, standardize and automate HR processes. The project enables the Postal Service to increase efficiency, reduce costs and provide employees with 24/7 access to their personnel files and other HR-related information.

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Libey says rate increases, declining prospecting monster DM trends

Posted by | Apr 13, 2007 | |

Rate increases, declining prospecting, talent absorption, the failure of net neutrality, online intensity and new systems.

These were just a few of the monster trends that are about to shake the world of direct marketers, according to direct mail guru Don Libey, who spoke at the Direct Marketing Club of New York’s April luncheon at the Yale Club.
“We have endless silent partner increases ahead,” said Mr. Libey, discussing the first of several monster trends. “If you sell something, print something, publish something, or send something through the mail, you are faced with endless, unsustainable silent partners.”

The silent partners, he said, are the U.S Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and Google.

“Massive postal increases, 13 percent increases for international delivery by UPS, increases by FedEx, fuel surcharges,” he said. “What we have done is abducted our control of our business in direct marketing because we are remote.”

Rate increases are also causing a decline in prospecting, another monster trend, Mr. Libey said.

Another monster tend is talent absorption in the direct marketing industry.

A monster trend Mr. Libey is particularly concerned about is net neutrality. He suggested that special interests, lobbyists and politicians are choosing money over equality for the Internet, and that speed and access will cost direct marketers more than postage does today.

Smaller catalog size is a monster trend too, Mr. Libey said and added that he thought the move to smaller catalogs was concerning.

Mr. Libey said another monster trend is online intensity, and it is only going to get more intense.

“We’ve only seen about 10 percent of the ultimate online share of the market basket,” Mr. Libey said. “Expect a near-doubling of online influence and sales over the next three years. “

He said this trend is dangerous because it is moving people away from the basics, such as offers, lists, and response.

“We are embracing technology at a dangerous rate, and we cannot turn away from it, so we must begin to harness it and understand it,” he said.

Another trend Mr. Libey discussed was that the United States is exporting teaching about how to do direct marketing in China, India, and elsewhere. He suggested that these countries may beat the United States in the future, as their economies grow faster than the United States.

The last monster trend Mr. Libey spoke about was the fact that there is enough knowledge and experience now to create the first fully integrated, fully analytic and working enterprise-wide, multichannel, operating system.

Finally, Mr. Libey said that this is the most exciting time he has even seen in the direct marketing industry.

“It is fraught with challenges,” he said. “It is also separating the players and the also-rans. It embraces new worlds and new channels. It is global. It is expensive. And it is going to be two or three times its size in twenty years. Welcome to the dawning of the new direct marketing.”

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FedEx delivers operation to New Haven facility

Posted by | Apr 10, 2007 | |

FedEx Home Delivery has outgrown its facility on the north side of Fort Wayne and plans to relocate to the FedEx Ground facility in New Haven that was built three years ago.

FedEx planned to start construction early this month on a 15,000-square-foot expansion of the 55,000-square-foot FedEx Ground facility. Executives expect the new location to be operational in August.

The relocation to New Haven is part of a nationwide expansion for FedEx Home Delivery.

The company is looking at adding nine new hubs and expanding 37 existing hubs, as well as relocating or expanding close to 300 local facilities, such as the one serving the Fort Wayne area.

Currently, FedEx Home Delivery operates a network of more than 500 distribution hubs and local terminals throughout the United States and Canada.

Bloomberg reported late last month FedEx Corp. has been growing more rapidly in U.S. ground shipping than its larger rival, United Parcel Service.

FedEx Ground volume rose 12 percent in the most recent quarter, while UPS gained 3.6 percent, according to analyst Donald Broughton of A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. in St. Louis.

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