What’s Going on with Marketing Mail?
OKOKOK! The weather sucked. We get that. But we’re still not happy with Marketing Mail performance across the country. It was worse for the 5th week in a row – slower than the week before Christmas. First-Class Mail, on the other hand, seems to have found its new cruising altitude, a little slower than before October, but meeting its new standards nicely.
First-Class letters did OK with 93.91% on time using current standards (76% against last year’s standards, again). Generally First-Class Mail seems to have found its new normal – a lot of pieces would be one day late by older standards, which was kind of the plan. First-Class flats had something of a comeback with 92.76% delivered on time against current standards. (82% against prior standards.)
Marketing Mail Letters continued a five-week decline with 91.32% of letters delivered on time. It doesn’t sound terrible on the surface, but Marketing Mail has verrry generous standards. In the summer we were consistently seeing well over 95% of Marketing Mail letters, so 91% is pretty terrible - the worst week since we began measuring in June. Marketing Mail Flats were delivered on time 92.19% of the time, normal mediocre for them. There is still a lot of bad weather about.
Average Intra-SCF delivery time was 2.76 days for Marketing Mail letters, 2.62 days for Marketing Mail flats.
Slowest SCFs for Intra-SCF letters, delivery week of 1/31: (10,000 pieces minimum)
- Memphis, TN: 6.53 days
- Baltimore, MD: 6.18 days
- Springfield, MA: 5.79 days
The fastest:
- San Diego, CA: 1.49 days
- Van Nuys, CA: 1.50 days
- Las Vegas, NV: 1.56 days
A letter from California to Maryland, on average, took:
· First-Class: 4.23 days
· Marketing Mail: 11.80 days
Clearly, bad weather in the Northeast contributed to delivery issues. Here’s to sunnier days!
Chart of the Week
Marketing Mail letters on-time performance. Not liking the trend.