Opinion: Seriously Consider Attending New Postal Event in Washington, D.C.

To our readers, this is a personal and highly opinionated message from your industry publication’s editor-in-chief. We at Catalog Success strive to bring you objective and implemental money-making ideas, and it’s quite rare I’d ever outwardly promote anything, although you’ll notice that in the past few editions we’ve been aggressively promoting an exciting upcoming seminar we’re co-presenting with F. Curtis Barry & Co. (see the Ops Tip of the Week for further details). But I want to take a time-out from our usual efforts to plug something special here that’s also in your best interests.

Specifically, it’s an upcoming postal event in Washington, D.C. on June 26-27 called National Catalog Advocacy and Strategy Forum, being presented by the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA), a small trade group launched a year ago.

First a little about ACMA. In its one-year existence, this group has been persistent in its efforts to give catalogers, and only catalogers, their own advocacy in Washington to support them in fighting to keep catalog postal rate increases down.

Member Sign-Ups a Challenge
Taken as a whole, it’s no secret that most catalog/multichannel companies don’t have much extra cash on hand — especially this year with business being so challenging for many and costs going through the roof. What’s more, many catalogers already pay dues as members of the Direct Marketing Association or other trade groups.

As a result, ACMA has struggled to build its membership. Whereas it had originally set a goal of signing up about 100 members by the end of its first year, it’s only reached about 70 members in a little more than a year — about 70 percent of which are catalogers, the rest being printers, list firms, paper manufacturers and consulting firms.

The organization was launched because some catalogers felt the DMA’s ties to its letter-mailer members prohibited it from acting in flats (catalog) mailers’ best interests when it came to getting favorable postal rates for letters vs. flats. I want to make it perfectly clear that, in my opinion, this is not the DMA’s fault. This has come about because the evolving structure of postal rate setting has effectively driven a wedge between bulk letter mailers and bulk flats mailers for more than a decade now. Letter mailers gain better discounts because letters are cheaper to process and deliver. That certainly makes sense, but the flip side of it is catalogers’ rates, most notably in last year’s postage increase, have skyrocketed. That’s made the DMA’s task in trying to serve both letter mailers and flat mailers more challenging.

Anyone who criticizes the DMA in this regard is out of line. The DMA has to represent all its members and can’t merely snub one over the other. By starting an entirely new group, the ACMA took the best approach. But it barely has enough backing to get by.

As for the event itself, ACMA’s executive director Hamilton Davison has worked feverishly to pull together this postal event quickly, but it needs a decent turnout among catalogers.

In fact, Hamilton approached me at the end of April to see if Catalog Success would agree to co-present the event, but unfortunately, as I had to tell him, we’re in the thick of putting together our first-ever conference with F. Curtis Barry & Co. just a week and a half before this event. We just didn’t have the manpower or enough time to manage both of these events properly. Then Hamilton turned to NEMOA, and the NEMOA board has also aggressively promoted this among its members — plus NEMOA members will qualify for ACMA member rates.

We’ll revist the possibility of co-presenting this event if ACMA chooses to do it again in the future. For now, this editorial is part of what we’re doing to help out on our end.

Postal Heavy Hitters
Davison says he’s received commitments from the following postal heavy hitters, all of whom will be speaking and carrying on a dialog with catalogers during the event: From the USPS, Postmaster General Jack Potter; Deputy Postmaster General Pat Donahoe; Chief Marketing Officer Anita Bizzotto; VP Pricing & Classification Steve Kearney; and VP Government Affairs & Public Policy Marie Therese Dominquez.

The following representatives from the Postal Regulatory Commission also will be there: Chairman Dan Blair and commissioners Ruth Goldway and Mark Acton. And Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has been invited.

Unlike the National Postal Forum, the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee meetings and other postal events, this one will focus solely on catalogers’ interests. So I recommend you consider attending, whether you’re an ACMA member or not. For information, contact Hamilton Davison at hdavison@catalogmailers.org or Cathy Roden at croden@catalogmailers.org.

A Closing Disclaimer (of Sorts)
A final note here: Those of you who’ve gotten to know me well over the years know full well that I pride myself on objective reporting, both with the material we run in Catalog Success and during my years at the old Catalog Age. I’ll be perfectly blunt: It pains me to write a shameless puff piece like this, and I assure you that nobody paid me off to do so.

But per our tagline, “Your Partner in Multichannel Commerce,” I do feel very much like a partner to our catalog/multichannel readers and have a vested interest in your future. So pulling yourself off the beach and making your way to an event such as this is certainly in your best long-term interests.