Daily printout: Oct. 15

The Postal Service’s “Mailin’ It!” podcast recently surpassed 1 million downloads.

“Mailin’ It!”, which began in fall 2021, offers listeners a deep dive into the many facets of the Postal Service. Podcast episodes have included stories about postal history, a look at USPS products and services, and case reviews from the Postal Inspection Service.

“It gives listeners a close-up look at what makes the Postal Service tick,” said Karla Kirby, podcast co-host and the director of USPS compensation programs.

The “Mailin’ It!” hosts work on the podcast in addition to their regular duties, and the production team is managed by Corporate Communications, including writing, scheduling, producing, engineering and editing. The podcast team brainstorms all year long to come up with show topics and to find the right guests.

Jeff Marino, manager of USPS digital creative and interactive content, has been supervising the program from the outset. He has worked on every episode and began co-hosting with Kirby a year ago.

“We started the podcast because we wanted to be more proactive in telling the Postal Service story,” Marino said.

Before launching, Marino and his team researched what other government agencies and mailing and shipping organizations were doing with their podcasts, and then they cleared everything with USPS attorneys.

According to Listen Notes, a podcast search engine, an average podcast will post 21 episodes before becoming inactive. “Mailin’ It!” has published 94 episodes so far.

“I’m glad we hit the million downloads milestone, but I’m never satisfied that this is the best we can do,” Marino said. “I will continue to define success by the steady growth of an audience of regular listeners.”

New podcast episodes are available on Link and other postal websites, as well as most podcast platforms.

Email us your feedback. Your comments could be included in our “Mail” column.

The Postal Service is reminding employees to remember the differences between Election Mail, Ballot Mail and Political Mail — and the right tags to use for each.

Election Mail is any item mailed to or from authorized election officials that enables citizens to participate in the voting process. This includes ballots, sample ballots, voter registration cards, absentee ballot applications and polling place notifications.

The Official Election Mail logo can be applied to these pieces to help distinguish Election Mail from the millions of other mailpieces processed daily. The logo is the other major physical identifier used during election season.

Ballot Mail, a subset of Election Mail, is sent to or from authorized election officials and contains a ballot that may be used to cast a vote in an election.

Only Ballot Mail is permitted to use Green Tag 191, Domestic and International Ballots. No other form of Election Mail can use this tag.

Political Mail is any material mailed for campaign purposes by a registered political candidate, campaign committee or committee of a political party.

It also includes any material mailed by a political action committee (PAC), super PAC or other organization engaging in issue advocacy or voter mobilization.

Only Political Mail can use Red Tag 57, Political Campaign Mailing.  

The tags should be affixed to containers of Ballot Mail and Political Mail to provide greater visibility as they enter Postal Service processing and distribution operations.

The green Ballot Mail and red Political Mail tags are available at Business Mail Entry Units. Green Tag 191 can also be ordered online.

More information can be found on the Election and Government Mail Services page on Blue and on PostalPro.