Written by Mike Bogad, VP of Business Development, following this quarter’s MTAC meeting
Every few years, USPS reshuffles the org chart. Most of the time it’s like rearranging the living room. Same couch, new corner. This time they bought a new couch.
I spent two days at USPS headquarters for the October MTAC meeting. The agenda was packed, but two things stuck with me more than anything else: revenue and performance. USPS is lining up around both, and they’re saying it out loud.
Everyone in the same canoe
USPS created a new Commercial organization, with Gary Reblin leading it as Chief Commercial Officer. Sales, revenue operations, and package pricing now sit under one roof. That may sound like inside baseball. It’s not. For years, a lot of us felt like we were selling on behalf of USPS. Now it feels like alignment is the driver.
What stood out to me was how the changes aligned across the organization. Sales and revenue got one leader. The visibility and modernization team now sits inside the Commercial organization, right next to sales. Engineering moved under processing and distribution, so the people who design plant equipment now sit with the people who run it. No single department made the change. It was up and down the org chart, and across it. I think of it like a canoe. You can have the strongest paddlers on the water, but if half paddle left and half paddle right, you go in circles. For a long time, that’s how it felt. This time, every area I heard from seemed to be paddling in the same direction.
Reblin’s early priorities include growing Marketing Mail, building a stronger advertising product, improving visibility, and winning back volume that walked out the door. GrayHair Software captured it well in their recap, and it was the same line I wrote down: a “pathway to yes,” even if it’s “yes, but” or “yes, and.”
I’ve been in this business 33 years. I don’t hear that every day. I’ll take it.
What I'm watching
Revenue has to come from somewhere. Packages, Marketing Mail, and advertising got the spotlight. That makes sense, because that’s where the growth is. What I didn’t hear much about was the mail that shows up every day no matter what. Certified Mail and Certificate of Mailing don’t go away when the economy dips because a law or contract requires them. That’s steady revenue, and it’s still harder to buy than it should be. If USPS wants an easy win, make accountable mail easier to send. That’s a conversation I’ll keep having at MTAC.
Performance starts with visibility
If revenue was the headline, performance was right behind it. And you can’t talk about performance without visibility. USPS leadership spent real time on tracking, near real-time data, and making sure mail actually gets measured. What caught my attention was passive scanning. USPS is testing small, battery-free tags on containers. Nobody stops to scan them. They just report where they are.
Think about what that means. For years, a scan was something a person had to remember to do. Miss it, and the piece goes dark. Passive tracking removes that step. It ties right back to revenue, too. Reblin’s own list includes visibility technology that gives customers confidence in USPS products.
Translation: people buy what they can see. If you can’t see it, you can’t prove it. That’s true for USPS, and it’s true for every mailroom and mail center out there.
Four numbers worth knowing
Debbie Damore and the team at GrayHair Software put out one of the best MTAC recaps. If you want the full detail, read it here: GrayHair Postal Updates: Week of 10/26/2026. These four numbers from it stuck with me:
- 5.6%. That’s the current forecast for the July 2027 price increase, roughly 3.5% for inflation plus 2.2% for density. It’s down from 7.8% in June. Inflation has been running hot, so it could still climb before it locks in this spring. Plan for it now, not in April.
- 11. That’s how many facilities are testing those battery-free tags. Early results are very positive. It starts with packages, with mail possibly coming later. One day, the scan somebody forgot to do won’t need doing at all.
- 2, then 3. USPS hit two of its FY2026 First-Class service targets outright: Single-Piece and Composite. Adjust for hurricanes, wildfires, and winter storms, and it hit a third, Presort. That’s progress, and it deserves credit. It also proves the point. You can only claim a win you can measure.
- 21%. That’s the drop in people who manage mail inside businesses, from the EMA Foundation’s jobs study. The whole industry lost about 475,000 jobs from 2022 to 2025, roughly 6%. Production and distribution fell about 4%. Yet revenue grew almost 4%. The work didn’t go away. The people did. Fewer hands, same responsibility. That’s exactly where automation earns its keep.
What it means for our customers
For Received Digital customers, USPS is working hard to see every piece of the trip. That visibility stops at your dock. Once a package comes through the door, chain of custody is on you. If USPS grows packages the way it wants to, more land there, and tracking them on paper gets a lot harder.
For Easy Send customers, Certified Mail and Certificate of Mailing were visibility products before visibility was cool. They exist to prove something was mailed or delivered. A USPS that wants revenue and performance should send more of both. Our job is to make those pieces easy to send and easy to prove. I had good conversations at MTAC about automating Certificate of Mailing, and I’ll share more as that moves forward.
So here’s my “yes, and.” Yes, USPS is focused on revenue and performance. And accountable mail is sitting right there, built on both. The canoe is finally pointed the right way. Let’s paddle.
The next MTAC is in January. If there’s something you want me to raise, send it my way.
