The US Postal Service will market test a new competitive, less-than-truckload shipping service known as Collaborative Logistics. The Postal Regulatory Commission signed off on the USPS proposal, which gives the postal agency two years to conduct the market test. The PRC directed the agency to provide regular quarterly and annual reports detailing performance results,

The Los Angeles Times is launching a new weekend magazine insert, LAetcetera, on Sunday, May 10. LAetcetera will be produced by the same independent editorial team that helms the LA Times' monthly Sunday glossy, LA. The new magazine will be distributed quasi-weekly — three times a month — to 480,000 targeted subscribers who do not already receive LA.

List Management Plus introduces the Extreme Sweeps.com Buyers list to the market. This file contains people who have completed surveys and taken part in incentive programs online in exchange for sweepstakes entries and free gifts.

Click Forensics has announced a new version of its traffic quality management platform, which will now allow ad networks, publishers and advertisers to identify traffic based on its likelihood to convert.

The Direct Marketing Association has named Adrea Rubin, CEO of Adrea Rubin Marketing Inc., its 2009 List Leader of the Year. The annual award honors an individual for outstanding contributions to the list and data industry.

Fast food chain Dairy Queen has begun using mobile marketing in an effort both to reach consumers on the go and to promote its new Sweet Deals value menu and has found the results to be sweet.

Most people would agree that the best way to land a new job is to network. Now, there's some new research to back that up. The Bernhart Associates Employment Report has been surveying hiring trends in direct marketing since 2001. This was the first time we asked employers to identify their largest source of new hires.

Every business person who cares about delivering value, quality and integrity in servicing customers knows one thing: Responding to customer feedback promptly and consistently builds trust and guarantees repeat business. Enterprise CRM technology must reflect that knowledge, belief and commitment by ensuring all the right steps for an appropriate response without delay — but also without missing the background information available in other document and data-heavy systems across the company.

Moving to a new home — whether for work, family or simply more space — is one of the great catalysts of consumer spending. The average new resident spends about $7,300 on everything from window treatments to take-out meals in the three months following a move. This spending sweet spot around a new move is prime time to reach consumers when they are most receptive to trial offers and actually looking to forge new connections.

Social media has been a scary word in the e-mail space since MySpace got big back in 2006. There has been talk that social media would kill e-mail and new channels like Twitter and Facebook will mean the demise of e-mail.