US Post Office's Rescue Plan: Junk Mail

The agency, beset by historic losses and a plummet in first-class mail, is running promotions, easing rules and planning television and radio ads to encourage more businesses to send pitches by standard mail, the official term for bulk mailings used by marketers to prospect for customers.

"What we want to do is to make standard mail more interesting for customers so we can grow the total volume," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in an interview. "We don't call it junk mail—it's a lucrative avenue for anyone who wants to reach customers."

(...) The postal service is trying to promote advertising mail that "matches up digital and hardcopy" mail, as a way to show companies that physical mail can drive consumers to their websites, Mr. Donahoe said. In July and August, the agency gave a 3% discount to any piece of advertising mail that had a special code that could be read by a smartphone.

The agency is also encouraging small businesses to use direct mail. It generated 501 million pieces of new advertising mail and $75 million in revenue between March and late September by easing rules on bulk mailing. Businesses can bring as many as 5,000 pieces of advertising mail a day to the post office, to be delivered by a carrier to every home on a route, without an exact name or address on the envelope, for 14.2 cents apiece. In the past, the postal service required envelopes to be fully addressed, which meant merchants had to purchase mailing lists.