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Method for controlling when mail is received by a recipientRelated Patent Categories: Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, Or Cost/price Determination, For Cost/price, Postage Meter System, With Specific Mail Handling MeansMethod for controlling when mail is received by a recipient description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20070192258, Method for controlling when mail is received by a recipient. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
[0001] This Application claims the benefit of the filing date of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/663,027 filed Mar. 18, 2005, which is owned by the assignee of the present Application. CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0002] Reference is made to commonly assigned co-pending patent application Docket No. F-986-O1 filed herewith entitled "Method For Predicting When Mail Is Received By A Recipient" in the name of John H. Winkelman and Docket No. F-986-O3 filed herewith entitled "Method For Predicting Call Center Volumes" in the names of Docket No. F-986-O4 filed herewith entitled, "Method for Dynamically Controlling Call Center Volumes," in the names of Alla Tsipenyuk, John H. Winkleman, John W. Rojas, Kenneth G. Miller and James R. Norris, Jr. Docket No. F-986-O5 filed herewith entitled, "Method for Determining the best Day of the week For a Recipient to receive a mail piece," in the names of John H. Winkleman, John W. Rojas, Kenneth G. Miller, Alla Tsipenyuk and James R. Norris, Jr. FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0003] This invention relates to mailing mail pieces and, more particularly, to controlling the day of the week when a mail piece is delivered to a recipient. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0004] Direct marketers have used the mail to sell products to customers for almost as long as there has been mail. For direct marketers the USPS is viewed as a black box where the time required to process and deliver the mail is based on guess work and rule of thumb. Where First class mail has delivery standards associated with it, Standard class mail has less stringent delivery standards associated with it. For most of the country First class mail will be processed and delivered within three days. Once the USPS accepts Standard mail the time to process and deliver the mail will be from 1 to 14+ days. Direct marketers have learned to live with this lack of real knowledge when a mailing will be delivered in home or place of business. [0005] A disadvantage of the prior art is that direct marketers use rules of thumb to determine in home or place of business or place of business date range for a mailing, which is not very accurate. One of the methods used is to base in home or place of business volumes on when the mailing was shipped from the mail production facility to the USPS induction facility, i.e. when the mailing is dropped. In home or place of business volumes would be so many days after the mailing dropped, such as from 1 to 10 days from the mailing drop date. [0006] Another method used is to add seeds to the mailing to determine when the seeded mail is delivered and assign that delivery date to all the mail going to that destination city, state or all the mail in the tray the seed is in. Seeding involves sending a mail piece to a known address of a service firm and having the firm date stamp the mail piece and send the mail piece back to the direct mail marketer. A large number of seeds would be 200 or so which is not enough to cover the 350 USPS Destination Sectional Control Facilities in the United States. The direct mail marketer then infers the in-home dates for the mailing as a whole by correlating the shipment date of the mail (when it leaves the letter shop) and when the seed indicated that they received the mail piece. The direct mail marketer then assumes that all mail going to the area that the seed is in arrives on the same day or on some window around the seed date. [0007] Another disadvantage of the prior art is that a mailer is unable to control when the mail will be delivered to a recipients home or place of business. A further disadvantage of the prior art is that a mailer does not know when the mail piece arrived at the recipient's home or place of business. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0008] This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by controlling when a direct marketing prospect will receive a mail piece. The foregoing is accomplished by establishing when to induct mail at each of the many Destinations Bulk Mail Centers (BMC) in the United States; establishing when to induct mail at each of the many, i.e., 350 Destination sectional Control facility (SCF) in the country; establishing the achievable service level--percentage of mail that can be expected to arrive in the desired in-home window that the direct mail marketer is trying to achieve. [0009] An advantage of this invention is that it accounts for seasonal variability in mail delivery performance based upon USPS staffing and system loading. [0010] An additional advantage this invention is that it accounts for the sortation density of all trays of mail within the mailing. [0011] A further advantage of this invention is that it accounts for where the mail is going in terms of destination zip codes and USPS performance against those zip codes. [0012] A still further advantage of this invention is that it accounts for and adjust expected in home or place of business curves for non-controllable circumstances such as natural events or national security issues. [0013] This invention also takes into consideration: the impact that private logistics companies have on trucking, storing and ultimately inducting standard `A` mail; the impact that when the USPS will actually accept truck loads of mail from high volume mailers; the shape, weight and format of the mail; and the conformance of the mail to USPS automation processing standards. [0014] This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by determining when the prospect receives the offer; determining the day of week or day of month that produces the highest response rate; and determining prospect behavior in terms of gap between receiving the offer and acting on it. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0015] FIG. 1 is a flow chart of a prior art direct mail marketing process; [0016] FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing how to predict recipient delivery distribution for a mailing; [0017] FIG. 3 is a flow chart that generates the actual mail shipment induction date and triggers a prediction update. [0018] FIG. 4 is a flow chart that loads facility conditions and status information and triggers prediction updates if changes are detected. [0019] FIG. 5 is a actual vs predicted in-home curve for controlled mailing. Continue reading about Method for controlling when mail is received by a recipient... 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