Last week, the United States Postal Service (USPS) filed its annual postal rate increase for 2021 to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). As expected, Marketing Mail prices increased incrementally across the board, with the exception being for Parcels which increased by 16.8%.
Here are the proposed pricing details for all Marketing Mail pieces:
| Product | Percent Change |
| Overall | 1.5% |
| Flats | 3.6% |
| Letters | 0.8% |
| Parcels | 16.8% |
| HD / Saturation Letters | 2.4% |
| HD / Saturation Flats & Parcels | 1.0% |
| Carrier Route | 3.5% |
| Every Door Direct Mail – Retail | 0.5% |
These rate changes largely aligned with the American Catalog Mailers Association’s (ACMA) prediction, which was sent in a members-exclusive email last week. ACMA is a catalog industry association based out of Providence, RI whose mission is to advocate for catalog, online, direct mail, and other remote-selling merchants, as well as their suppliers by representing them on issues that directly concern their immediate and long term commercial interests.
Arandell understands the impact these rising costs have on our customers’ businesses. With this in mind, Arandell has been working diligently with the ACMA to request that the USPS consider reducing the 3.5% increase on Flats and Carrier Route products in order to avoid more volume declines from most mailers that were affected by COVID-19 this year.
As the nation’s premier catalog printer, Arandell is dedicated to informing customers and assisting them in exploring all options to offset costs should these rate increases go through.
For a more detailed summary of all the proposed postal rate increases for this upcoming year, including for First Class, Periodicals and other non-Marketing Mail pieces, please see the full summary in Excel format.
For all other questions, please feel free to reach out to one of our postal experts, Rick Kropski (Senior VP of Supply Chain & Logistics) at RLKropski@Arandell.com or Susan Pinter (Director of Postal Systems & Operations) at SGPinter@Arandell.com.