It’s Time to Eliminate Daily Mail
January 28, 2009
The US Postal Service is considering dropping the number of postal delivery days from six to five. The only problem with this idea is not going far enough.
What’s the right delivery frequency? I’d suggest starting with weekly deliveries. This would not significantly degrade the quality of service. Most mail is not time-critical. Larger items that are time sensitive could be handled just as well by services like UPS and FedEx. For short messages, we have telephones, email, IM, SMS, or, for those who want to drag along, fax machines.
Physical mail should not be protected as if it were still the only or even the best form of long-distance communication. It’s one option among many and neither needs nor deserves the level of subsidy and protection it receives. More, as recent losses have demonstrated, it simply can’t afford to operate at these levels.
It’s time to allow the postal service to adjust to current realities. Congress needs to drop the requirement for daily delivery and the USPS needs to respond with more than a minor restructuring. These services have their place and can be profitable, but not if they remain stuck in the past.
Transitional Services
January 7, 2009
While preparing a post on the topic of transitional services, I found out that someone else had already done a great job of introducing the topic. Mike McDerment of Freshbooks gave this definition:
Transitional Services are services that facilitate a user’s transition from one platform to the next – or at the least, ease their pain.
Before going on, I’d recommend you read the rest of his post. For Freshbooks, their transitional service was offering paper invoices as an adjunct to their core tool of providing online invoicing. It made it easy for users and companies to shift to the online system while making the old process (paper invoices) even easier than before. That’s the best sort of transitional tool. Make the old easier. Smooth the transition to the new. Don’t leave people behind in the process.
This is precisely the service Postful has been able to offer to a number of other sites (many too small to either efficiently handle their own print production or outsource). We let them shift to a digital workflow while making it easy for users who still prefer or need paper.
By doing so, we have no illusions about print returning to it’s central role in communication. But we do believe that, like any worthwhile transition, this one will be accelerated and eased by not making it an all-or-nothing decision.
While billions of documents are still printed and mailed every day, the information that composes those documents is increasingly stored on the web. Providing a bridge between that data and print output is a huge task and offers equally large opportunities.
More, as we develop these processes for print, we’re building the tools that will be needed to help the rest of the manufacturing sector integrate with the computing cloud. Print is just the first of the these physical processes to make the transition. When the wave hits the rest of the manufacturing sector, we can look forward to a surge of innovation which promises to make the next decade a very interesting time.
Less Paper
January 6, 2009
Xerox’s Francois Ragnet recently released a whitepaper contrasting the goal of a fully paperless office with the idea of focusing on using less paper. We enthusiastically embrace both goals, but agree with Francois that the place to start is with less paper.
Too many efforts at creating paperless offices have forced an all-or-nothing decision. By pushing organizations to make a single large leap, costs are vastly increased and change becomes disruptive. Internal opposition often stops such projects before the implementation is complete.
More, for the moment, paper remains a valuable tool for communication and is still essential for reaching certain parts of the population. Given that, the real question is how best to build hybrid workflows. How can we keep the advantages of paper while transitioning to digital documents and tools?
Obviously, there is no single answer. There are a number of pieces that are still developing rapidly. Huge improvements are yet to be made in everything from document management systems to digital readers and portable devices.
Services like Postful can provide one piece of the puzzle by allowing a fundamentally digital workflow to easily output physical documents. For users who still wish to use paper, this can provide a better experience than even a traditional paper-only process. All users are left better off rather than having some left behind.
The key concept is that a digital document is not tied to a particular output format. A document can be viewed by one user as an email, by another as a printed letter, and by another as a series of SMS messages. The medium isn’t the message.
Such systems can take into account the preferences of all users and do so in a way that maximizes the advantages of the digital core. It allows for a smoother transition and more useful final result.
And, while we all keep working towards the paperless office, check out Francois’ whitepaper for some great ideas on simply using less paper.
2008, We’ll Miss You
December 31, 2008
It’s the season of year-end retrospectives. This is the time when blogs across the web are filled with reminiscences, thoughts of the year past, and the realization that they haven’t posted anything for several months and really should.
At Postful, it’s been a busy year. We came out of beta at the Office 2.0 conference in September. We added postcards to complement our existing letter offering. We’ve released a major new version of our API. Through it all, we’ve continued to add new users and find that we’re being used in new and unexpected ways.
Thanks for a great 2008, loyal Postfulites (Fun Fact: historically, the Posfulites were residents of the Posful valley in modern Iraq. They were wiped out by the Akkadian empire over four thousand years ago). We’re looking forward to an even brighter 2009.
Postful at Graph Expo
October 25, 2008
For those of you who will be attending the Graph Expo conference in Chicago next week, drop us a note. We’d love to meet up with as many Postful users as possible!
New Dispatch Times
October 13, 2008
Over the next week, we’re going to be adjusting the time at which letters are dispatched for printing. After the transition, all letters will be dispatched at 1AM PST, Monday through Friday. This change will allow us to more easily handle volume spikes and avoid mailing delays as volumes continue to expand.
Please let us know if you have any questions about this change.
Columbus Day
October 12, 2008
Just a brief reminder that another minor postal holiday is almost here. Tomorrow, October 13, is Columbus Day (don’t worry, we didn’t remember either until our holiday notice came up). Any letters or postcards which would have normally gone out tomorrow will instead be mailed on Tuesday, October 14.
I know I’ll be out singing traditional Columbus Day carols (my favorites include “Scurvy like you mean it”, “Spice Girls”, and “White Christmas”).
Volume Discounts
September 6, 2008
One of the key questions many clients ask us when signing up is for details on volume discounts. Volume discounts are now available for all users, vastly expanding the range of mailings for which Postful is appropriate.
Discounts are based on the size of the payment. For example, a user adding $100 would see the price of a single page letter drop from $.99 to $.89 for the next $100 of orders.
Postful has always been the best deal available for individual mailings, now we’re able to extend that to much larger runs. Combined with our unmatched integration options and ease of use, we think that this will open up a lot of new uses.
Postful Adds Postcards
September 5, 2008
The biggest feature we’re launching this week is the addition of postcards. It’s now easy to send custom postcards with your own photos and designs.
To try things out, just go to our site, upload a photo, and add your message. You can preview the card, set the recipient, and send in minutes. It’s only $.59 for a single 4.25″x6″ card. Volume discounts take things down from there.
It’s a great way to send reminders, thank you notes, vacation postcards, holiday cards, and more.
Of course, for many of you, sending individual cards isn’t your key concern. You want to integrate this directly with your application. Through our API, you have full control of the postcard printing system, including complete control of the design on both sides of the card (both sides full color).
If you’re interested in getting more details, just contact us and we can help you to handle the integration process.
For everyone, let us know what you like and, just as importantly, what you don’t like. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
Postful Launches from Beta
September 4, 2008
By now, many of you have noticed the major changes with Postful. We’re thrilled to be launching out of beta this week at the Office 2.0 conference where we’re one of the Launchpad companies.
We’ll be talking a lot more about the new features that we’re launching over the next few days. For now, let me just start by thanking all of the users who have helped us so much through the course of our beta development. Your feedback, patience, support, and excitement have been invaluable.
And, I’d like to also welcome all the new users who are joining us for the first time. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.
