USPS Starts “Sticky” Program

Catalog customers may soon be finding sticky notes in their mailboxes, now that the U.S. Postal Service has kicked off a national program that allows “repositionable notes” or RPNs to be placed on cards, large letters, catalogs, magazines, and newspapers.

The USPS has been testing mail pieces with the removable, 3” x 3” note flags — more commonly known by the 3M brand name Post-it notes — for a year. Testing proved that mail with RPNs, which must be machine-applied to the left hand corner of the given mail piece, was compatible with the USPS’s automation, and the agency officially rolled out the program April 3. So far, Minnetonka, MN-based general merchandise mailer Fingerhut Direct Marketing is the first national customer to use RPNs on catalogs.

Some mailers and mail groups expressed outrage at the test last summer because of the surcharge the USPS was imposing for each mail piece affixed with an RPN. Under the program, the USPS is charging $0.005 for RPNs on first-class mail and $0.015 for RPNs affixed to periodicals or standard mail.