One of the many business ideas I toss around with friends is a service where physical postal mail is scanned and emailed to the recipient.
About a month ago, I commented on a post at The Operations Room, entitled Green Mail. The post was about the USPS transitioning to a more fuel efficient delivery fleet, but I mentioned the idea of them cutting their fleet drastically and moving to a scan / email service. In response to my comment which mentioned that privacy issues could be sorted out, the following comment appeared:
The bits on “the mail is scanned” and “Privacy issues could be sorted out” are the funniest (oh, yes, someone will open my mail and scan it, and there won’t any privacy issues!).
As it turns out, there are people willing to risk it. Finland’s postal service announced this week that they will be starting a pilot program this week.
In an effort to increase efficiency, cut carbon emissions, and reduce costs, Finland has begun a pilot program wherein snail-mail letters are converted into PDFs and made viewable online by their addressees, in advance or in lieu of physical delivery.
The Operations Room also caught this news, and brought up a few other potential roadblocks to paperless postal service:
What happens when someone sends you a check? I realize that worrying about checks is almost to the point of worrying about replacing a turntable stylus, but they still presumably have to worry about grandmothers sending birthday cards with a little something inside it.
Yes! I love receiving checks and cards stuffed with cash in the mail! I hate the hassle of going to the bank though… So postal service, please forward all checks and cash right on to my bank please! Or… Great, I’ll expect those checks and cash in my once weekly delivery!
It turns out there are other services like this available already. Earth Class Mail and Swiss Post (video below) offer a system whereby they scan the envelope exterior then you log on at your convenience and mark each item as:
- Deliver to me as normal (or any address actually like my winter home in Florida) OR…
- Shred and recycle (my name is not “Resident” or “Neighbor” thank you very much) OR…
- Open, scan contents, and email to me
Swiss Post Box has licensed the ECM system and created this video introducing the service and process:
Other Options Currently Available
Canada Post has also started a program (Canada ePost) to reduce the amount of physical mail being transported around although is currently limited to a certain list of participants and has not reduced the daily delivery routings. Another take on this idea is Zumbox which allows senders to mail electronically to a postal address of anyone who has signed up for the Zumbox service. Zumbox has gotten some municipality support (San Francisco and Minneapolis to name two) by aligning with a green initiative called “Paperless Please,” but has also not resulted in a reduction in postal routings.
The Operations Room author goes on to ask:
What about magazines or catalogues? Do users of this service have to make do with web-based media? I can’t imagine that will play well with publishers.
First of all, assuming that the email postal service would be receiver opt-in, I can’t imagine publishers being so dumb as to not play along. Talk about Voice of Customer!
That said, I’d be the first to admit that I enjoy flipping through a physical magazine. However, some would argue that today’s iPad release marks a shift in print based content delivery, not to mention the ongoing growth of smartphones, netbooks, and general wireless media access. If the technology were right, I might realize that I enjoy browsing a magazine on an electronic device even more…
Also, there are obvious benefits to the publishers in transitioning from print based to electronic delivery. Most notably, advertisers are moving more and more online because of its ability to serve targeted, relevant ads rather than blanket ads (i.e. one in every copy). And I’m confident in stating that web based content is cheaper to produce at almost any scale, and enables massively greater reader interaction (e.g. magazine “covers” with targeted images or headlines, “similar article” linking, comments, “tweet this” links… the list goes on…).
Catalogs and pure advertisements may initially have a more difficult time coping with the idea that they should no longer send out paper, although I bet they would pay a postal service for information on who click “shred” and who clicked “scan and email”… Is it really worse than sending a paper version to every house in the neighborhood and blindly wondering how many went directly into the nearest trash can? (Pre-approved credit card offers, I’m looking at you…). Marketers go to extreme lengths to identify what images, what copy, and what timing converts the best from a mail-out to redemption or sales. Currently though they are often left with sales as their performance metric – leaving a gap between when the customer received the mail to when they “redeemed.” If they were able to identify which slogans elicited a “scan and email” or “deliver to me” and then also measure sales or redemptions, they have a more precise measure of the effectiveness of their materials, and more detail on where the conversion hit or missed.
But Where is the Value-Add?
If value was high enough to just move everything currently utilizing the postal service to the internet, it would have happened already. And there is no question that some (perhaps most) people do not trust the postal service to handle their personal mail. Indeed this was the knee jerk comment on my initial comment on The Operations Room first post on the topic.
But this is exactly where I can see the value.
Currently the sender places the piece of mail in a mail box where at least one person will have to handle it to pick it up before it is routed through untold numbers of machines and human hands and eventually placed into one more postal service employee’s hands for delivery to the recipients mailbox. Would you know if any of those humans were crafty enough to be able to open and re-seal your mail after reading your personal information? Do you trust the people at your bank / employer / lawyer / [insert service provider] to not read your personal information and sell it to the highest bidder?
Making this email postal service viable is all in its execution.
How I Would Do It:
Many are aware of the automation capabilities in terms of mail handling. My experiences in corporate mail rooms has taught me that paper mail can be opened and separated without any human interaction other than dumping a bucket of mail into a hopper. From there, standard paper and envelope sizes are automatically sorted and arranged for automated scanning, and non-standard pieces are separated for manual handling.
So, if I were a postal service looking to add value here is what I would do:
- Secure the process in a “clean room” where all activity is monitored closely to employee badges (or biometric identification… my laptop requires a scan of my fingerprint, why can’t a post office scanner)
- Educate customers (mail receivers) on the extent of automation and security; “When you send paper mail, 10 humans touch it. When you send and receive ‘E-Post’ 3 humans touch it – all in the secure confines of the ‘E-Post’ clean room.”
- Create a “material” option whereby a sender could require that the original physical parcel be delivered. This would serve for legal documents, mail order goods, etc.
- Allow receivers to set “filters” – e.g. ‘if sent by [fill in the blank e.g. Grandma] deliver [choose delivery medium e.g. Physical Mail - Don't Open & Scan]
- Set the price structure from economical to expensive: electronic original, standard size original, non-standard size original
Bonus: This very idea has actually been used as far back as WWII! Check out Victory Mail!
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