Well, the numbers of pieces of mail are down (mostly the recession), the costs of running the USPS are up, despite cost cutting.

Congress has to admit a few things:

•     Give more leeway to the USPS when it comes to decisions [not mentioned the  voting USPS workers in each and every Congressional district]
•     A large number of USPS employees retiring in the next few years
•     Many post offices are not profitable now, alternatives needed
•     Saturdays, does delivery make sense?
•     Legacy costs - health care, pensions, all sorts of stuff you can’t imagine are there

What the Post managed to avoid - you go to use a USPS machine and about 60% of the time, the thing is not working properly. Err, you have to wonder would that fly in a totally privatized company.

Here is the link to the Washington Post lead editorial for March 10, 2010.

http://ow.ly/1gJoC

As the direct marketing industry we need to make sure that we do our part to help the discussion to be more friendly to our position. Now, direct mail is about 52% of the volume. We should have some clout and the Direct Marketing Association and others have a great opportunity to develop a leadership role.

Led Zep, The Clash, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Bowie’s Ziggy, Tubular Bells, etc…. Kinda hard to believe I remember when they all came out. Now the ever brilliant marketing department at Royal Mail has put them on stamps.

Having gotten a first day cover, they are pretty wonderful. They look better than the dusty albums in the box.

Nostalgia…

Brand Republic covered this -    http://ow.ly/1gi0J

Royal Mail  set up a special site http://ow.ly/1gi4g

Stamps who’da thunk they are so fun? Not the USPS generally.

This article is written by someone who lives and breathes this stuff. Hard to imagine starting at age 16 doing this, but being young he has the energy and time to really devote to the in’s and outs of this topic. This article is really one of the best I have seen on this topic.  http://ow.ly/1aQVi

Bethesda List is delighted to welcome a list formerly managed in-house, Librarian eNewsletter Subscribers from The Library Resources Group.

Library Types include:

• Academic

• K-12 School Libraries

• Public

• Special Libraries

Full details are here:

http://ow.ly/1g8p1

Contact info@Bethesda-List.com for counts and orders.

So says this very interesting article from WordTracker, “The long tail of keyword research”…

http://ow.ly/1g7TU

It appears the author is right. Even the top 20% of all your clicks have many, many very small traffic keywords.

The number of searches done in the month studied was 113 Billion across the search-universe. There are lots of potential customers who don’t think and act like you, thus you need to cast a wider keyword net than you might think you need to. But don’t just stuff words on the page, that is not too useful and your sentences sound and read in a very strange fashion.

The result on the “long tail” thinking is expressed as a graphic “the long tail is so long that the head is of no significance”.

This article is a goldmine of good ideas for natural SEO campaigns.

This is from our friend Greg at Hippo Direct.

It is really one of those things every marketing person needs to keep handy in postal and Email.  As you probably know, every postal address has a zip-code. This permits more rapid sorting and delivery. Well, lots of marketing folks need to target only key states. Here is the summary http://ow.ly/1eHrl

City SCF ranges are also available.

Bethesda Emedia has been working diligently to put up articles on a variety of subjects. We have about 100 articles that we consider a “best of” group.  Best of all, they are organized with tags that include:

• SEO (search engine optimization)
• Direct marketing
• Direct mail,
• Email marketing
• B2B
• B2C
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Social marketing

We search out articles from many sources, this is not just a bare knuckles promotion for one or two companies. Some of our best ideas come from those who Tweet themselves. Our Twitter site, djamesbethesda, re-tweets winners as well.

Access to the Bethesda Emedia Marketing Library is free.

Tell me what you think.

Technology Transfer Tactics has appointed Bethesda List to manage the two files — eMail (the bigger one) and postal. These professionals work at universities, law firms, large manufacturing companies, research labs,  government, venture capital firms and economic development authorities.

They are key executives and professionals  in the development of new businesses and industries in:

• life sciences
•  medical
• military and defense
• information techology (IT)
• nano technology
• clean tech chemistry

As the nation’s economy rebounds and looks to its future growth, these people are on the forefront of that march. Full data cards are here:

Technology Transfer Tactics eNewsletter Subscribers with Email

http://ow.ly/1cRPT

Technology Transfer Tactics Subscribers  (postal)

http://ow.ly/1cRUg

Barbara Higgins is the primary contact for order processing. Full details above in the link.

Excited to report Bethesda Emedia Marketing’s Email Knowledge System was given as an example of a good bit of Wisdom learned in 2009. The latest issue of Marketing Wisdom for 2010 has our contribution on pages 28 and 29!

Our article discussed how all too often many campaigns have lots of creative cooks.   The changes keep coming and when the final version is sent it is sometimes hard to figure out what actually went in the transmission.

Email Knowledge System (sm) solves this with it’s project management approach. The vault is there when you need it, next week, 3 months from now, or a year from now, or longer. And it is easy to see who made that change as well.

The Email Knowledge System is included free with your Bethesda Emedia Marketing eMail transmission account. Contact David James, djames@BethesdaEmediaMarketing.com for more details.

Almost 500 association executives and vendors dined at Washington’s Capital Hilton (the one near the White House).  The air was certainly more festive than last year when “worried” was the look on most everyone’s face.

Besides the salute, Association Trends saluted the Young Association Executives (those under 40) who show promise and they honored the Best of Association Communications winners - the fields have grown over the years to include: Annual Reports, Websites, eNewsletters as well as traditional postal promotions for meetings, books, conferences and whatnot.

This was the first Salute luncheon since Columbia Books & Information Service (the list owners of Association Executives from Columbia Books and Lobbyists from Columbia Books) acquired Association Trends. Kudos to Jill Cornish and the Columbia Books team.