Enrollment is open for the new USPS Non-profit, Marketing, and First-Class incentives. You don’t want to miss this opportunity to earn a 30% postage credit for the direct mail you send through June 30, 2024. Combined with USPS’s yearly promotions, this can have a significant impact on your marketing budget in the future.
There’s a lot of information out there about this new incentive.
In this post, we’d like to give you an overview of the program. There are a lot of details, but we aren’t going to include them here. This covers some of the basic questions we’re hearing from clients and service partners (and questions we had ourselves). We will follow up with more in-depth information about the postage credit incentive program. But, if you can’t wait for all the details, check out the “First-Class Mail and Marketing Mail Growth Incentives FAQs” at USPS Postal Pro.
You must be a mail owner in fiscal year 2023 to register for the incentives, which allow you to earn credit to apply toward future postage for mail volumes. The credits will be issued between January 2024 and December 2024.
When you register, the post office determines your baseline mail piece count, which equals your total mail volume for that classification during the USPS fiscal year (October 1, 2022, through September 30, 2023).
For each piece of mail you send above your baseline, you will receive 30% of the postage you paid as credit toward future mailings in 2025.
There are three conditions for a mail owner to receive these postage credits.
—You must meet registration requirements including your baseline volume for each incentive, which is determined by the Postal Service.
—It does not matter how much you mailed this year to enroll. But you must mail one million pieces or more in the calendar year 2024 in order to earn postage credit. Credits start to accumulate once you hit the one million mark.
—Your calendar year 2024 volume must exceed your volume in fiscal year 2023.
How do I receive and apply my postage credits?
USPS will calculate and award credits at three times during the incentive period:
—July 2024
—October 2024
—January 2025
For this example, let’s say that during USPS fiscal year 2023 you mailed 2 million pieces of qualifying mail. During fiscal year 2024, by the October checkpoint, you exceed that by 1 million, mailing 3 million pieces of mail.
You’ll receive 30% postage credit on the 1 million additional pieces. On top of that, any extra qualifying incremental mail in 2024 will receive the 30% postage credit.
You can use the postage credits you earn from July 2024 to December 2025.
EdgeMark’s direct mail production team can help you take advantage of new Non-profit, Marketing, and First-Class incentives. Combined with USPS’s current promotions and the upcoming 2024 promotions, the additional savings from the new incentives can help you reach more donors with your message throughout the year, potentially increasing your fundraising totals and your return on investment over time.
