Postal Action Alert: USPS Files for the 2025 Mail Volume Growth Incentive

4/17/2024

On April 9, 2024, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) a Market Dominant price change. The Postal Service will again offer the First-Class Mail and Marketing Mail Growth Incentives in Calendar Year 2025 (CY 2025). The objective of the incentive is to encourage mail owners (MO) to increase qualifying First-Class Mail and Marketing Mail volumes in CY 2025.

The incentive will offer postage credits for incremental mail volume in CY 2025 (Jan 2025 to Dec 2025) versus what a mail owner mailed in USPS FY 2024 (Oct 2023 to Sep 2024). 

This can be illustrated by the following two examples:

1. If a mail owner had mailed at least a million or greater of qualifying mail pieces in FY 2024 within a mail class, then qualifying mail volume mailed in CY 2025 within the same mail class that exceeds USPS FY 2024 total would be considered incremental volume and eligible for a 30% postage credit. For example:

• Qualifying mail volume was 1.5 million for USPS FY 2024
• Qualifying mail volume was 2.0 million for CY 2025
• Incremental mail volume is 500 thousand and therefore subject to a 30% postage credit

2. If a mail owner had mailed less than 1 million qualifying mail pieces in USPS FY 2024 within a mail class, then qualifying mail volume mailed in CY 2025 that exceeds 1 million within the same mail class would be considered incremental volume and eligible for a 30% postage credit. For example:

• Qualifying mail volume was 800 thousand for USPS FY 2024
• Qualifying mail volume was 1.3 million for CY 2025
• Incremental mail volume is 300 thousand (1.3 million less minimum of 1.0 million) and therefore subject to a 30% postage credit.

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Mail growth postage credits are calculated independently by major mail class (i.e., First-Class Mail or Marketing Mail). They cannot be combined for the purpose of calculating incremental volumes. Qualifying volumes by major class and product are described below.

• First-Class Mail qualifying products
  • Presort letters 
  • Presort cards 
  • Presort flats 
• Marketing Mail qualifying products
  • Letters and high-density / saturation letters
  • Flats and high-density / saturation flats and parcels
  • Carrier route
  • Parcels

Postage credits will be calculated by mail class using the following formula:

• (Average price for all CY 2025 qualifying products) x (Incremental volume over USPS FY 2024) x (30%)

The PRC will likely take between 30 to 45 days (approximately the week of June 13 or earlier) to review the filings and confirm whether the proposed Growth Incentive is consistent with applicable postal law.

Registration for each of the Mail Growth Incentives is expected to occur through a registration portal, which will be made available through the Business Customer Gateway (BCG). 

As part of registration, the USPS will establish a mail owner baseline volume from USPS FY 2024. The mailer must record their agreement with this baseline volume and other conditions for participating in the incentive in order to receive postage credits. Postage credits will be issued to qualified mail owners after six months, nine months, and twelve months from the start of CY 2025 and will be able to be used on future mailings until December 31, 2026.

RRD Postal Affairs will continue to provide you with important updates as they become available. Please reach out to your RRD Account Representative to help you discover how you may be able to take advantage of this USPS incentive. For questions, please contact postal.affairs@rrd.com.