Have you heard the news? Postage rates are set to increase again on July 13! The cost of a first-class letter will increase by five cents, from $0.73 to $0.78. The cost of a postcard will increase by six cents, from $0.56 to $0.62, as shown above (clicking here will open a larger image in a new window).

Since 2012, first-class postage has increased by 73.3% and postcards have nearly doubled, rising by 93.8%.

I suppose the good news is that this will be the first increase in a year, unlike the two increases per year we’ve seen for three of the last four years.

What is the impact?

Hopefully, you have budgeted for this increase and factored it into any upcoming rate increases. As postage costs continue to rise, encouraging more customers to switch to paperless or ebilling becomes increasingly important.

Incentives

Some utilities offer incentives, such as bill credits or prize drawings and giveaways, to entice more customers to sign up for ebilling.

Other utilities have automatically signed up all customers with an email address on file. This puts the onus on the customer to call and request to be switched back to a paper bill. One utility that did this told me very few customers requested to switch back to paper bills.

Paper bill fees

Recently, I’ve begun hearing rumblings from some utilities about imposing a paper bill fee for customers who insist on receiving a bill in the mail. I’ve been researching this and will write about it in a future blog post. If your utility has imposed such a fee, or considered it and decided against it, I would love to hear from you! Feel free to send me an email describing your experience with paper bill fees.

Postcard bills

This year’s postage increase, unlike last July’s increase, continues the pattern of raising postage for postcards more than for first-class mail. In this decade, five of the eight postage increases have seen postcards rise more than first-class mail. Two increases were the same, and last July, first-class rose more than postcards.

If you’re still printing postcard bills, I think the handwriting is on the wall for the future of postcards. The few utilities I know of that still print postcard bills do so primarily to save on postage. They do this even though they can only present limited information to their customers.

Interestingly, if you are sending postcard bills without presorting, the increased postage cost for outsourcing is less than three cents per bill.

Are you operating as efficiently as possible?

Is your business office operating as efficiently as possible? If you’re unsure, please call me at 919-673-4050 or email me at gary@utilityinformationpipeline.com to learn how a business review can help you improve your operations.

© 2025 Gary Sanders