White Papers

RARC-WP-15-009 - 04/20/15Delivery to curbside mailboxes or neighborhood cluster box units costs less than delivery to the door. But do curbside and cluster box delivery result in a lower level of customer engagement with mail? To find out, the Office of inspector General (OIG) asked the market research firm InfoTrends Inc. to conduct a survey of 5,000 postal customers. The OIG then asked Professor Michael Bradley of George Washington to analyze the survey data to determine how customer engagement with advertising mail varied by mode of delivery.The survey results clearly show customers with delivery to the door had significantly higher levels of engagement with most kinds of advertising mail than did customers with curb or cluster box delivery. These findings are especially important because advertising mail is critically important to the U.S. Postal Service’s finances. The paper suggests that the Postal Service do more to understand the impact these findings could have on the effectiveness of advertising mail.Read the Full Report