Bell and Howell Joins Universal Postal Union’s Direct Marketing Advisory Board

DURHAM, NC—December 8, 2014—Bell and Howell CEO Dr. Ramesh Ratan has announced that the company has joined the Universal Postal Union’s Direct Marketing Advisory Board. The UPU is an intergovernmental organization that regulates mail exchanges among its 192 member countries and helps to ensure a universal network of up-to-date products and services. It is also a specialized agency of the United Nations.

Ratan will sit on the Direct Marketing Advisory Board, which is one of a few UPU groups that include companies from the private sector. The DMAB’s mission is to foster the growth of direct marketing through the mail by positioning designated operators as important direct marketing channels, and contributing to economic and market expansion by increasing market knowledge and developing the expertise of stakeholders at all levels.

Bell and Howell has long been an innovator for the U.S. Postal Service and Posts worldwide, having invented some of the key underlying technologies for mail creation, finishing and handling. The company is now extending those capabilities to packages and parcels.

As an active member of the DMAB, Bell and Howell is poised to share from its extensive experience and innovative approaches to influence and promote global best practices in direct mail. Likewise, the company will benefit from the Board’s access to and collaboration with leading direct mail experts, trade associations and private companies.

"Bell and Howell’s gripper-arm mail inserters have been the backbone of the global growth of direct mail," said Ratan. "As a member of the DMAB, we look forward to sharing our expertise to help Posts worldwide transform from focusing on mail to enabling the continued growth of e-commerce."

Saudi Post’s Sami Alowedi, Chair of the UPU’s Direct Marketing Advisory Board, added: "The mail is an important and competitive communication avenue for direct marketing. An estimated 30 percent of letter-post consists of direct marketing, and Posts are increasingly using and developing additional innovative channels to meet their customers’ needs. We are always pleased to welcome new members such as Bell and Howell, who can bring valuable knowledge and expertise to our group."

About Bell and Howell
Bell and Howell is a trusted partner to its customers in their critical touch points with their own customers. Its customers include many of the world’s largest providers in banking, insurance, telecommunications, public utilities, postal, freight operators, governments, and print and mail service bureaus. As the pioneer of production mail-inserting and sorting systems, the company has evolved its competencies in service, software and hardware technologies to enrich customer communications and commerce in print, mail and parcels operations and information infrastructure.

Supporting these solutions is one of the largest technical service organizations in the industry across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Germany. Headquartered with manufacturing in Research Triangle Park, NC, the company maintains engineering, sales and business presences in Wheeling, IL; Dallas; Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; United Kingdom and Germany.

About Universal Postal Union
Created in 1874, the UPU, based in Berne (Switzerland), is an intergovernmental organization and the primary forum for cooperation between governments, Posts and other stakeholders of the worldwide postal sector. In addition to maintaining a genuinely universal network that provides modern products and services, it establishes the rules for international mail exchanges among its 192 members, and makes recommendations to stimulate mail volume growth and to improve the quality of service for customers.

In 2013, some 5.4 million employees processed and delivered 340 billion domestic and international letter-post items and 6.7 billion parcels. Many postal services also offer expedited mail, financial and electronic services. Some 663,000 postal establishments make the postal network the largest physical distribution network in the world. The UPU is a specialized agency of the United Nations since 1948.