Zumbox Lines Up GovDelivery
Zumbox, the US start-up that wants to turn paper mail into e-mail delivered to a digital mailbox that corresponds to the recipient’s street address, has lined up another big mailer to experiment with its concept.
A few weeks ago DST Output, which produces and delivers nearly three billion electronic and print mail pieces to more than 120 million US street addresses on behalf of its 600 clients every year, said it would try to push that business into digital mail.
Now Zumbox has gotten GovDelivery, which has got 350 local, state and federal government clients sending out 200 million messages a month including e-mails, text messages and social media to 15 million people, to try to do the same thing.
Unfortunately for Zumbox GovDelivery’s already got a digital subscription management solution that provides organizations with a fully-automated, on-demand public communication system.
However, GovDelivery CEO Scott Burns claims his “clients have been asking for additional tools to accelerate efforts to reduce paper and mailing costs.”
The service will be free to recipients, who are promised free perpetual storage as well. It will also be free to GovDelivery clients if they start using it this year, delaying any pay off for Zumbox.
Recipients have got to sign up for the scheme to work and not many people know Zumbox exists.
It could be a financial benefit to government mailers that are reckoned to spend anywhere from 60 cents to $1.20 per resident a month and an environmental boon for everybody.
Zumbox recently changed its approach to the market. It’s now focusing on large transactional, financial and government mailers for the pick-up it needs.
GovDelivery clients include the US Departments of Defense, State, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, Homeland Security, Justice, Health and Human Services, state agencies across 30 states, the cities of Washington, DC, and Minneapolis.
Editorial: Mobile Sensors on Postal Trucks Revisited
Last week I took a look at some ideas that Michael J. Ravnitzky, a lawyer at the US Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) who, acting as in his capacity as a private citizen and enquiring mind, set down in a paper outlining how the USPS might employ a variety of sensors and other data collection devices mounted on postal vehicles to generate new revenue. Some of my article was decidedly tongue-in-cheek and I even ribbed him a bit about how far out I thought some of his ideas might be. Well, my teasing notwithstanding, I got a very gracious note from him – probably more gracious than my snarky article deserved – thanking EPN for the exposure and offering a few corrections that I promised to pass along.
Mr. Ravnitzky is chief legal counsel to PRC chairwoman Ruth Goldway, a title I hastily summarized in my headline as “Top PRC Lawyer,” meaning that he’s a lawyer who works near the top of the organization. It might have been better if I had said, “A Top PRC Lawyer,” I guess. Anyway, Mr. Ravnitzky judiciously pointed out that he is not the PRC’s general counsel, as my headline implied. Fair enough and duly noted.
There was also a problem with the URL shrinker I used for the links to his research paper and presentation, which were sources for my article. As a result, the links we printed didn’t work. As I said in my article, the paper and presentation provide a painstakingly researched and presented proposition; and Mr. Ravnitzky certainly deserves to have his work widely viewed so that everyone can reach his or her own conclusions about its value and validity. So, here are the corrected links to the research paper and presentation from which my article was sourced.
http://www.prc.gov/prc-docs/library/refdesk/techpapers/Ravnitzky%20Postal%20Sensors%20Paper%20070910-MJR-1_1306.pdf
http://www.prc.gov/prc-docs/library/refdesk/techpapers/Ravnitzky%20Finland%202010%20Presentation_1305.pdf
I wish to thank Mr. Ravnitzky again for bringing these errors to my attention and to ensure that everyone gets a chance to examine his creative and thought-provoking proposal.
Tim Negris
ePostal News
Deutsche Post Enters Web Ad Biz, Buys ‘Predictive Behavioral Targeting’ Platform
by Tim Negris
Deutsche Post AG, the mail side of Deutsche Post DHL, has acquired nugg.ad (http://www.nugg.ad/en/), a provider of technology and services for enabling highly targeted online ad campaigns, on undisclosed terms.
Since its founding in 2006, Berlin-based nugg.ad has grown into the largest firm of its kind in Europe, offering software and services “for agencies and advertisers to tailor their advertisement design to particular target groups, significantly increasing the effectiveness of ads.”
The company boasts unique intellectual property in the form of proprietary software algorithms that work with web users’ click patterns, survey data and other information to serve up highly targeted ads on the web in real-time.
What, you may well ask, does web advertising have to do with delivering letters and packages, or, for that matter even with direct mail marketing services?
Nothing obvious. But, according to the announcement made in Bonn last week by the post and parcels giant, the move “has consolidated new areas of growth in online marketing fully in accordance with its 2015 strategy.”
Really?
In March, 2009, Deutsche Post World Net CEO Frank Appel unveiled “Strategie 2015” (http://tinyurl.com/Strategie2015), a corporate strategic framework that said:
• The new name Deutsche Post DHL underscores a two-pillar strategy based on mail and logistics
• The Mail Division is to focus on quality and new products in electronic communications
• DHL is to strengthen cross-divisional collaboration
According to Appel “Our goal is to remain ‘Die Post für Deutschland’ as well as ‘the logistics company for the world.’” The announcement further laid out the goals for the Mail group like this:
“To recalibrate the business in response to decreasing volume and increasing digitalization, the Mail Division will refocus its core business while retaining the high-quality level enjoyed by German customers. In the process, the company will primarily concentrate on the integration of physical and digital solutions in dialog marketing. It will also introduce an online letter to provide secure electronic communications as well as integrated sender and recipient services at Parcel Germany. To meet these objectives, the Mail Division plans to step up investments in coming years and may also consider partnerships. The ultimate goal is to strengthen the company’s unique position as an integrated service provider for secure and reliable communications.”
The “electronic communications” targeted by the strategy include secure e-mail, in-country parcel tracking and e-mail marketing. It says nothing about advertising, and the nugg.ad site says nothing about mail. Furthermore, the announcement of the acquisition (http://tinyurl.com/DPnuggBuy) says that nugg.ad will stay where it is in Berlin, with its current management and mission intact.
And, in the announcement, Jürgen Gerdes, Mail Group chairman, says, “We are confident that we will establish our position in the online advertising market with nugg.ad.” And, Stephen Noller, nugg.ad CEO, says, “It is a dream combination for us because in Deutsche Post we have found a buyer that consolidates our position like no other as a neutral service provider in the value creation chain.”
So, in reality, for Deutsche Post, this deal seems to be an unacknowledged departure from its core business and from Strategie 2015, and it gives nugg.ad’s founding investors what is hard to see as anything but an exit. It is hard to imagine how this will end well for Die Post für Deutschland.
Headlines – Issue No. 500 (September 6-10, 2010)
Deutsche Post Enters Web Ad Biz, Buys ‘Predictive Behavioral Targeting’ Platform
Zumbox Lines Up GovDelivery
Editorial: Mobile Sensors on Postal Trucks Revisited
Accenture to Postal Industy: Diversify, Digitalize, or Die
Poll Shows Most UK Voters Want To Keep the Mail Public, Sort of
USPS Overpaying Retirement Fund by Billions – Again
Delayed Delivery Services Taking Off in China
TNT Opens One-of-a-Kind Logistics Center in UAE
Swiss Post Having a Great Year
BBH Launches Technology for Faster, Cheaper, Greener Volume Mailing
Japan Post Wants To Electrify its Fleet, Maybe Yours, Too
Ghana Gov’t Pledges Support for Postal Reforms After Massive Fraud
New Zealand Post Confirms Tiny Profit & Big Credit Infusion
Norway Post: First Half Not Awful
3PAR Prefers HP – For the Moment
Red Hat Out To Set Cloud Interop Standard
Citrix Virtualizes the Laptop
EC2 Creators Get $15m Bankroll
Court Moves Up Neon v IBM Antitrust Case
Centrify’s Got a Cure for the Cloud Security Blues
New Coalition Takes Cloud Down ‘Ecosystem’ Path
Bechtolsheim’s Arista & VMware Collaborate on Visibility
OpenSolaris Board Quits En Masse
RIM’s BlackPad To Joust with iPad
Antivirus Player Gets $100m VC Investment
Eucalyptus Project Revved
Platform Computing Fields Packaged Private Cloud Eval Solution
Server Sales Were Healthy in Q2: IDC
HP Buys Stratavia
Guess Who’s Drawing AMD’s Server Roadmap Now
Mark Hurd Sells Ungrateful Stock
CFH Hybrid Mail Gets Boost
CFH has gotten a framework agreement for its Docmail service from Buying Solutions, which means the document and mail processing house will be supplying its two year-old hybrid mail widgetry for public sector contracts throughout the UK for the next four years.
Buying Solutions is an executive agency of the Office of Government Commerce in the Cabinet Office that delivers procurement solutions for nationally sourced commodity goods and services to customers in both central civil government and the wider public sector. Vendors included in the Buying Solutions framework get access to a diverse public sector customer base that comprises the biggest central government departments, National Health Service (NHS) Trusts and local councils, through to the smallest schools.
CFH is already an established print-and-mail services supplier to the public sector, mailing over three million documents in March alone during this year’s main council tax billing period, and earlier this year gaining Connecting for Health status, the assurance standard for NHS customers. Now, with the addition of its hybrid mail solution to its public service product mix, the company reckons it can save the government millions of pounds each year.
The CFH Docmail service combines online technology with Royal Mail delivery to provide a lower-cost way to send mail, whether a single personal letter or a database mailing reaching thousands. With the service, a mail originator creates a letter in Microsoft Word format on a PC and uploads it, along with any additional materials in PDF format, with recipient addresses to Docmail, where the mailing is printed and then delivered through CFH’s “downstream access facility” by the Royal Mail. Standard Docmail (equivalent to Royal Mail’s second-class service) prices start at 25p for a single-page, personalized black-and-white letter, or 34p for color. Prospective customers can also try the service for free.
CFH managing director Dave Broadway says, “Significant cost savings can be achieved by the use of hybrid mail and in the current climate this is clearly a route public sector bodies will find hard to ignore. By incorporating hybrid mail, customers can save in the region of 60% on their normal postal contracts.”
Top PRC Lawyer Has Bright Ideas for New Postal Revenues
By Tim Negris
Have you ever been really broke? What did you consider doing to raise some cash? Rifle the kids’ college fund? Sell your only car? Take in dodgy lodgers? Dire desperation has a way of blurring the line between creative and crazy, and, in the blooming USPS budget crisis, one particular postal apparatchik may have poked a toe or two pretty far past where that line should be. Or, maybe he just has too much time on his hands. That can make you nutty, too.
But, you be the judge. What do you think about tricking out every mail truck with a dazzling array of data-gathering devices and turning them into a mobile “listening posts” in the wars on terror and drugs? How about adding cameras to find stolen cars and traffic jams? Readers for utility meters? Sensors for gas leaks and potholes? Are you good with all that? Well, (cue Ozzy Osbourne’s song, “Crazy Train”) how about devices for the “Periodic Dispersal of Insect Pheromones from Postal Vehicles [to] Provide Pest-Control Benefits”? Still good?
Michael Ravnitzky is chief legal counsel to US Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) chairwoman Ruth Goldway and those are just a few of his many ideas for how US Postal Service delivery vehicles might be used to make some extra money. Ravnitzky is quick to point out that they are his own ideas and not endorsed by the USPRC. But his past influence on Goldway’s official thinking is well known, and links to the elaborate documentation of his ideas on this topic can be found on the PRC’s web site.
In the magnum opus “Offering Sensor Network Services Using the Postal Delivery Vehicle Fleet” comprising a detailed research paper (http://tinyurl.com/2dtq5ql) and snazzy presentation (http://tinyurl.com/26pr2hb), Mr. Ravnitzky provides an exhaustive catalog of notions that’s nothing short of breathtaking. One table enumerates no fewer than a dozen different “data collection and transmission modes.” Another presents a matrix of about two-dozen sensing applications running the gamut from detecting marijuana farms and meth labs to mapping electrical and magnetic fields.
For each application in the matrix it lays out “Likely Customers,” “Revenue Potential,” “Technical Feasibility” and whether or not it has “Possible Privacy Implications” or “Conflicts with Postal Mission.” With only two exceptions, prospective customers are all non-commercial entities, including every manner of federal, state and local government agency, plus scientific and academic institutions, and gas, water and electric utilities.
Not very surprisingly, the only commercial target customers on the list are Google and telecom companies. Somewhat more surprisingly, though, only a handful of the applications are seen as “probably” or “possibly” conflicting with the Postal Service’s mission. They are license plate scanning, methamphetamine lab, marijuana farms/drug depots, illicit explosives production, photo imaging, and pest control.
In Mr. Ravnitzky’s universe, and maybe that of the PRC, weather sensing, pothole mapping and detecting everything from gas and radiation leaks to the strength of TV, radio, and cell signals, plus a dozen more activities, having nothing to do with mail deliver, all somehow fit with the USPS’ mission.
Letter carriers had a different view. As one of them put it, “I can hear the gun fire already from drug dealers and gangs as they think we are spying on them. And just imagine, the carriers have no defense except a small can of dog sprayto which another added ominously, “My dog spray is a .38.” Nice.
Headlines – Issue No. 499 (August 30 – September 2, 2010)
Top PRC Lawyer Has Bright Ideas for New Postal Revenues
CFH Hybrid Mail Gets Boost
Estonian Post Shops for Parcel Terminals
Entrust Launches Publicly Trusted Certificates for Secure E-mail
Newspapers to PRC: ‘No’ on Exigent Rate Increase
Brits Losing Their ‘Stiff Upper Lip’
Stamps.com & Magento Partner
Latest Entrust Software Uses Smart Phones to Neuter Man in the Browser
Office Depot & USPS Tie Up
Postal Community Marks Grim Anniversary
TNT Express Expands Shipping Business in Saudi Arabia
USPS Increases Recycling Locations
Intel Buys McAfee
Oracle Sues Google Android
Oracle Kills OpenSolaris
HP Posts Hurd’s Last Quarter
HP Turns CEO Search Over to Headhunters
HP Rationale Number….
MokaFive Betas New MSP Widgetry
Top Techs Turn Drama Queens
RightScale To Manage Windows Apps in the Cloud
Rackspace Windows Widgetry Goes GA
Dell Spends Lavishly To Buy 3PAR
ARM Finds Smooth-Stone To Hurl at Intel
HP Buys Fortify Software
Dell Makes Its Numbers
Intel Fields New Atoms
Verizon Cloud First To Pass Credit Card Test
Interest in Novell Reportedly Dwindles
Nvidia Developing Tablet Chip: Bloomberg
Intel Buys TI’s Cable Modem Business
iPad Blamed for Netbook Shortfall
Google Claims California E-Mail Contract Rigged
This is Not a Good Thing Except Maybe for the Chinese
WTO Tells Europe To Can Tech Tariffs
CA Buys 4Base
IBM Buys Unica
USPS Told To Go Digital: Report
Major customers told the United States Postal Services that it needs to start offering electronic services if it expects to survive in a world where communications are turning completely digital.
What these services might be is a question since the USPS is forbidden by law to compete with the private sector, which seems to have digital communications pretty well covered, and was specifically ordered to stay out of e-mail four years ago.
Still, DM News, which covered the USPS Innovation Symposium last week, says that the post office was urged to build a trusted platform for electronic business like Deutsche Post is doing; offer a PayPal-like service for secure online bill presentation and payment; or create secure e-mail addresses linked to physical addresses, widgetry that privately held Zumbox is already supposed to have and is pitching to postal institutions.
Zumbox declined to discuss any negotiations with the USPS, even whether the agency expressed any interest. However, DM News quoted Postmaster General John Potter as saying at the symposium, “Maybe we have been too cautious in this area, given what we think the law says. But you sent the message repeatedly today that we have to be part of the solution going forward.”
Headlines – Issue No. 498 (August 23-27, 2010)
China Post Taps Acxiom To Grow Direct Mail Biz in China
USPS Told To Go Digital: Report
China Post Partners with TOM Group in Ambitions E-Commerce Venture
New EC Group Targets Postal Service Quality Across the EU
Oz Post Teams with OfficeMax
DHL Express Does Green Retail Shipping Out of Singapore
UPS and USPS Work Together for Many Happy Returns
Zumbox Announces Mailfeed HVTO Partner Program
Sendmail & Splunk Team Up
Stamps.com Integrates with osCommerce
USPS to War Troops: “Get ‘Em If You Smoke ‘Em”
New Zealand Post Fields iPhone App
Royal Mail for Sale? New Government Mulls Options (Again)
Prodigious Postal Parcel Purloiner Pinched, Pled and Pokey-bound
Oracle Claims There’s Still Some Fire in the Old Sparc
Cisco Bombs Big Time;Raises Macro Uncertainties
Hey, Fella, Your Tablet is Ringing
EC2 To Resell SUSE Linux By the Hour
Amazon Thought To Be Fetching $500m from its Cloud
Hurd Aftermath
Google Wave Crashes on Empty Shore
Salesforce Blowhard Eats its Words
Apple Short One iPhone ChiefHP webOS Tablet Reportedly Due Q1
SAP Concedes It Owes Oracle Millions
Skype To IPO
Google Korea Raided by Privacy Police
EC Pairs with FTC on Apple Probe: NY Post
IBM Buys Datacap
China Post Taps Acxiom To Grow Direct Mail Biz in China
Strategic pact will leverage database analytics to reach China’s growing consumer class
In a Beijing ceremony attended by senior executives from both entities, Little Rock, Arkansas-based Axciom Corporation, a billion-dollar leader in direct marketing technology and services, signed a “strategic cooperation agreement” with the China Post Group “to jointly expand China’s direct mail business by leveraging database marketing services.”
While a digital winter continues to spread over the print-based direct marketing business in North America and Europe, China is just getting started in the direct mail game, with China Post leading the way and Axciom now tagging along to counter their prospect of cooling growth in the West.
Several years ago, China Post, the giant state-owned postal and banking agency, began using its many thousands of letter carriers, armed with a detailed survey, to collect information about households and businesses across the country, with a special emphasis on economically developed areas.
This massive data collection effort has resulted in a rapidly growing database that currently contains more than a quarter billion records. And now the agency aims to employ Axciom’s technology and expertise in database marketing to exploit these copious information assets through a variety of new direct mail-related services for businesses inside the country and around the world.
And, well they should! In the past 20 years, the country’s per-capita income has grown a staggering 700%, with its wealthiest consumers clustered in the much-prized 25-44 age demographic. In the past five years, the percentage of the population considered to be “Zhong Chan” (literally “middle property”) has doubled, and by 2015 there will be 600,000,000 middle-class people in China – considerably more than 10 times the number of middle-class citizens in the United States.
Of greatest significance to marketers, in-country and the world over, that growth of middle-class consumers has been accompanied by commensurate growth in the consumption – of packaged, durable and luxury goods. And, with this growth in consumption has been an explosion in the use of credit cards and the purchase of life insurance, two industries that are heavy users of DM.
All of this adds up to a potential market for direct mail services in China that could quickly become larger than that of the US and the European Union combined, with a gap between them that will continue to grow over time, given current economic and population trends in many Western countries.
Lest tree-hugging readers worry about the environmental impact of all this, they should note that China has historically been a surprisingly timber-poor nation, forced to rely heavily on wood imports for domestic paper production, as well as home construction and furniture making. To counteract this weakness in the face of growing demand, some years ago the Chinese government undertook a number of aggressive developmental initiatives, including ones in sustainable forestry and paper recycling. We can hope that these programs will help to offset the environmental impact of the rapid growth in commercial mail production promised by China Post’s forceful foray into direct marketing.