Will the Post Office Survive?

Last year, the Post Office lost more than $8 billion. That was after cutting 110,000 workers and $12 billion in costs.

In 2010, retirement benefits cost the Post Office $7.7 billion, of which Congress requires that they prefund $5.5 billion. As a result, they started the year almost $6 billion in the hole. Not a great recipe for running a business.

The Postmaster talked about closing plants, laying off workers and suspending payments to their pension plan in the middle of last year. Congress stepped in and made them delay taking these actions - so the Post Office continues to bleed. It's tough enough to run a business, but with politicians in the way - it's got to be really tough.

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Expensive Doorstops?

In late June, President Obama spoke about his Waste Reduction program. In doing so, he pointed to a stack of printed Federal Registers and called them "expensive doorstops (complete with a visual)." After all - it's published online.

With that statement, he dismissed both the printing industry and the USPS. Yikes!

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11 Reasons Why Your Direct Mail Program Failed

Direct mail is a powerful communication tool with amazing targeting abilities and the potential to reach people that can't be reached online. When they work, they work well; but when they fail, it can hit your brand hard. Many people blame direct mail failure on the rise of social media use, but most of the time it comes down to poor planning, bad timing and a variety of other factors. We asked our team of marketers, strategists and designers for their input as to why direct marketing programs fail.

Here's what we had to say.

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Looking Back: Part 2

Not to leave anyone out, here's Part 2 of our big reveal. As you read last week, almost all of our predictions came true for 2010. Today's installment demonstrates that even if our predictions didn't completely come true, we weren't that far off!

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Looking Back: How'd We Do?

Having revealed our predictions for 2011, we felt it was only appropriate to let you know how well we did (or in rare instances, didn't do) with our predictions for 2010. Take a look!

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