You’ve probably heard the news by now; come August, the US Postal Service plans to stop Saturday mail delivery, though packages will still be delivered. When you heard the news, did you stop what you were doing and think through how this would impact your biz? If you didn’t, don’t worry, we did! Here are a few things to consider before August arrives:

Email is delivered 24/7 – With the changes to mail delivery the saving grace for a small biz might be email. Biased? Maybe. But email can be scheduled to arrive whenever you’d like or need it to; ensuring people know what your biz is up to. When planning your direct mail pieces be sure to supplement with email marketing. Do a tease or sneak peek to alert your recipients to check their mail or send an email when the mail piece should  arrive with the same info. There’s nothing worse than having a special sale and no one shows up because the invite arrives a day too late.

Plan direct mail pieces – Starting August 5th there will be no mail delivery, or pick-up, to homes or businesses. This is where you’ll need to do some pre-planning.  If you use direct mail for sales, events, newsletters, and such not only will you need to plan for these two non-delivery days when figuring out when your piece will arrive, but you’ll need to think about competition. Mondays have traditionally been pretty busy mail days, now they’ll be even busier. You’ll need to take into account how much mail will arrive and if it’ll impact your message getting seen.

Packages – The postal service will still deliver packages on Saturday. Post offices will still be open, and, if you’re drop-shipping packages, that’ll still be available too. But if you rely on the post office to pick up packages you’ll need to consider the additional days when sharing shipping times with customers.

We won’t know all the impacts the USPS Saturday delivery change will have for businesses small and large, but we’ll keep our ears peeled for any news and keep you posted.

Have you started to plan for the USPS Saturday delivery changes yet?

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