By Stephen Mayne


It is not just newspaper circulation and fixed line phone calls which are on the skids in
Australia, snail mail is also starting to contract at gathering speed.
You will have noticed the fall in Australia Post’s profits as the
number of letters sent stagnates, particularly ‘granny mail’ which
bears the full 50c fee as opposed to bulk business mail which gets
discounts.

Salmat’s latest profit announcement also shows for the first time in
the company’s history a failure to increase mailhouse volumes by at
least 10%. Instead the volumes actually dropped. Any keen student of
media and related industries should be very interested in these stats.

What will happen when more companies offer discounts when accounts are
emailed and auto-billed to credit cards (or direct debited) rather than
being posted out? It’s more fees for the banks and less for the old style mailhouse operators.

Brian Evans will have to consider these challenges at PMP but he should
be very happy that Mr and Mrs Crikey caused the RACV to run a contested
election in which PMP printed more than one million election packs.
Aussie Post also got to earn fees on about 55,000 ballots returned in
the reply paid envelope. We’re happy to help out in these difficult
times for the old snail mail and printing giants.