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Recent Reply Mail Issues

Prepare for the USPS 2024 July price changes. Stay in-the-know on the upcoming USPS adjustments to mailing services prices and how they may affect your mailings.

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USPS Mega-center plan expected to revolutionize mail processes

During the 2022 PCC Leadership awards, the Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, provided the audience with an update on the 10-Year Delivering for America Plan. The event brought together leaders from the Postal Customer Councils to discuss critical topics like product strategy, electric vehicles, service expectations, and the introduction of the new Regional Processing Centers (aka mega-center) that are part of the USPS network realignment. You can watch the full video here to see DeJoy speak frankly about what he sees as the upcoming “transformation” of the Postal Service, how changes in the organization are a challenge, and about their success in delivery of free COVID test kits (in which they received 1.1 Billion dollars).

These 60 – 75 new multi-functional facilities will be designed to house all network originating and destination volume, package processing, cross-docking, and other functionality related to their specific region. This major initiative will replace the

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Meet Phantom Janitor: How GrayHair’s Dev Team Optimized Their Peer Review Process

When the need presented itself for GrayHair’s Development Team to create a better peer review process, they wasted no time in building their own solution. Enter: Phantom Janitor, an in-house Slack application and the Dev Team’s go-to-ghost. 

The name Phantom Janitor was chosen due to its ability to integrate seamlessly into the backend of Slack while organizing the visual side of the peer review completion process. From start to finish, every action made from the initial case creation, to completion of the peer review, to the final approval of the peer review is tracked and overseen by team members with the help of Phantom Janitor.

The Phantom Janitor application was created with four main objectives: 

  1. Optimize task assignment
  2. Organize task grouping
  3. Incorporate alongside internal applications
  4. Facilitate a rolling review system

Phantom Janitor works to tackle each of the objectives above, operating through its own Slack channel. In this channel, team members can oversee and manage active cases by utilizing emojis to serve as visual progress markers for each stage of the peer review process. Specific emojis are used to

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Postage Rate Increases Status Update

In less than two weeks, Postage rates will increase. Here is the latest news released about that changes

On July 10th, postage rates will increase. The last postage rate increase was August 2021. This was expected as part of the Delivery for America plan. As the postmaster General stated, increased rates are needed to ensure the USPS reaches its goals. For the public, the impact will be an increase in the forever stamp.

For mailers, the increase proposed averages are 6.5% for First-Class and Marketing Mail letters and 8.5% for Marketing Mail flats. While similar to the price increase from August, this increase has a different primary driver. In 2021, the increase was driven by the COVID decline in mail density (fewer mail pieces per delivery), while the logic behind this year’s increase is due to the current rise in inflation.

Many mailers will be looking to offset these costs. Even with the understanding that this would occur, such options as special USPS promotions, expanded address hygiene methods, and enhanced segmentation. Here is an excellent article from PI world with a deeper dive into ways mailers can alleviate this issue.

Top 3 Ways to Respond to the Direct Mail Postage Rate Increase Coming in July

As the postal industry and the companies that work with mail try to adapt

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GrayHair Returns to the National Postal Forum

GrayHair had three objectives this year for the postal industry’s largest trade event. The first was to see many of our clients and friends after a two-year drought. The goal was achieved as our team spent time with many of our clients and their vendors (You can check out the classic tradeshow pics on our FB page).

Our next was to showcase that GrayHair not only persevered through the pandemic but prospered. In 2021, we started showcasing our Business-Ready Intelligence (BRI) Solutions and it felt great to introduce how postal data is the newfound hero beyond the mailstream.

Then, we always love to showcase our industry-leading experts’ workshops. They deeply dive into topics such as Informed Visibility (IV), address data quality, the evolution of postal data in the cloud, and how to deliver outstanding customer support to clients.

We may not have had our puppies, but with our focus on postal data as the hero, our “Hero Within” t-shirts were a hit. If you couldn’t attend this year’s NPF and get one, do not hesitate to reach out, and we will be glad to send one to you (while supplies last).

​​​​​​​​​See you next year in Charlotte!!! See you

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