Postage Went Up. Now What?

Another USPS postage increase is here. For direct mail marketers, the immediate concern is not simply that every piece will cost more. It is that plans made months ago may no longer work as expected.

Direct mail programs are rarely planned one campaign at a time. Annual budgets, mailing volumes, testing strategies, production schedules, and revenue forecasts are often established well in advance. When postage changes during that planning cycle, the effects can ripple through the entire program.

A budget that once supported twelve campaigns may now support only eleven. A carefully designed test may need to be reduced. An acquisition campaign may face a higher cost per response before the first piece enters the mail.

That is why the most useful question after a postage increase is not simply, “Should we mail less?”

It is: “How do we protect the plan?”

The Cost of Uncertainty

Postage is one of the largest expenses in many direct mail programs, but it is also one of the least controllable. Organizations can negotiate production costs, refine their audiences, adjust creative formats, and improve campaign timing. They cannot control when USPS rates change or how large an increase will be.

Even a relatively small increase can have a significant impact across hundreds of thousands or millions of pieces. Organizations with fixed budgets may be forced to reduce circulation, request additional funding, or shift money away from creative, data, testing, and other marketing priorities.

Postage volatility can also make organizations more cautious. Teams may delay decisions, shorten planning cycles, or hold back funds in anticipation of another increase. That uncertainty makes it harder to build the consistency that successful direct mail programs require.

Cutting Volume Can Carry Its Own Cost

Reducing mail volume may appear to be the simplest response, but it should not be automatic.

A smaller mailing means fewer opportunities to generate donations, subscriptions, sales, renewals, or customer engagement. It can also affect production efficiency and postal qualification. In some cases, cutting volume saves less than expected while significantly reducing the campaign’s potential return.

Testing is often one of the first areas affected. Organizations may eliminate a creative test, reduce the size of a test audience, or postpone trying a new offer. Those choices may balance the current budget, but they can also limit the learning needed to improve future results.

Before reducing circulation, mailers should understand what each part of the program contributes. Response rates, cost per acquisition, lifetime value, renewal performance, and incremental revenue can help identify where reductions would do the least damage.

Build Flexibility Into the Plan

Because postage changes are increasingly part of the direct mail environment, they should be treated as a planning variable rather than an unexpected exception.

Organizations can begin by developing several budget scenarios. A baseline forecast might use current postage rates, while additional scenarios model the effect of future increases. Teams can then identify their essential campaigns, strongest audiences, and most valuable tests before they face a budget gap.

Mailpiece design should also be evaluated early. Size, weight, shape, paper, addressing, and production specifications can all influence cost. Postal strategies such as commingling, destination entry, presorting, and USPS promotions may provide additional savings or improve delivery consistency.

These decisions are most effective when made during the planning process, before the creative is approved and the production schedule is set.

Creating Greater Budget Certainty

Optimization can reduce postal costs, but it cannot eliminate the underlying uncertainty. A future rate increase can still disrupt an approved budget even after every available discount has been considered.

At Gundir, that challenge led us to create the Gundir365 Postage Promise for 2026. The program locks in qualifying postage rates for 365 days. If USPS raises those rates during the coverage period, Gundir automatically provides a postage credit for the difference, subject to the program’s annual cap.

Gundir365 is not a replacement for postal optimization. It complements strategies such as commingling, destination entry, USPS promotions, and thoughtful mailpiece design by addressing a different part of the problem: predictability.

That predictability can help marketers establish annual volumes, protect testing plans, forecast campaign costs, and mail consistently without revisiting the budget every time postal rates change.

No organization can control the next USPS postage increase. But mailers can control how they prepare for it.

The strongest direct mail plans combine efficiency, flexibility, and realistic cost forecasting. With those safeguards in place, organizations can spend less time reacting to rate changes and more time improving response, generating revenue, and strengthening customer relationships.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.