What to do now that you’ve claimed your Zumbox and secured it with your PIN.
Let’s start with a brief overview. For every street address in the U.S. (all 150 million) we’ve created an online mailbox (a Zumbox) from which to send and receive digital mail (100% paperless). If you have a street address, then you have a Zumbox; it simply needs to be claimed (online) and then secured (through a PIN, which is sent via USPS to your physical address). At the very least, your Zumbox contains a welcome letter from us. It’s also possible that someone has already sent you digital mail there. Because your Zumbox doesn’t have to be claimed and secured in order for mail to be sent and stored there.
That’s the basics of Zumbox. If you noticed the attention Zumbox received last week from the Wall Street Journal, CNET, U.S. News & World Report, Treehugger, Mashable, EcoGeek, Triple Pundit, EcoChildsPlay, and many others, then you can rightly assume that there have been a substantial number of Zumbox sign-ups. I’m guessing you’re among them. Now that you’ve received your PIN, the question naturally becomes, “What happens now?” Quite frankly, the activity will be somewhat quiet at first. But before you get discouraged, there are several things that can be done.
As with any new communications technology, there is a natural ramp-up period. We also know this as the chicken-and-egg problem. When e-mail was first introduced, you could only e-mail those who had an e-mail address. With Facebook, you could only friend those who had a Facebook. And with Twitter, you could only follow those who were already Twittering. The big difference here is that everyone who has a street address already has a Zumbox; it may not have been claimed and secured but it exists, and mail can be sent there…right now. Which means that people or companies who currently send paper mail can start to also send the digital version via Zumbox today. This will not only enable a seamless and orderly migration from paper to paperless, but it should also accelerate that ramp-up period.
Since Zumbox is free for all qualified mail senders, there is a significant financial incentive for companies, nonprofits, and government agencies to adopt our paperless mail solution. There are no postage fees, and the cost of integration is negligible. If you work for an organization that sends paper mail with any frequency, you can be the person responsible for introducing this efficiency and cost-saving measure…not to mention helping your organization to go green. At the risk of overreaching, I’m confident that a number of companies can reduce their printing, paper, and postage costs through Zumbox such that it can avert layoffs and save jobs. Consider that a company with one million customers, where each gets a paper statement monthly, spends about $12 million per year on those statements alone. As they say, $12 million here, $12 million there…eventually it adds up to real money.
When it comes to the value and utility of Zumbox, it is clearly weighted toward two groups: those who frequently send paper mail and those who receive paper mail daily. Chances are, you belong to the latter. However, the bulk of the action and initiative that needs to take place rests with the former. We’re certainly doing our best in that regard. In the coming weeks, though, we’ll introduce a way for you, the daily paper mail recipient, to take action and communicate your desire to go paperless. Which should further curtail the ramp-up period.
In the meantime, you can let your friends, family, and co-workers know that they have a Zumbox, that there is mail in it, and that they only need to enter their street address at Zumbox.com to claim and secure it. Provided you know their street address, you can also send a letter or postcard via Zumbox so they have something personal waiting for them when they get around to checking it. If you’re a bit more tech savvy, you can also use our HTML editor to embed rich media and video into your letter.
Yours,
Glen Ward, President
P.S. If you’re a developer or entrepreneur, you can also consider ways to build on the Zumbox platform through our API. There are tremendous possibilities to leverage what we’ve built. This is certainly something you can do now.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
This is astounding. I wonder if it’d be easier for the elderly to grasp than email.
okay, i’m hooked on the idea – but the big thing missing from your site is an explanation of exactly how one converts incoming mail or somehow routes to digital transfer…so any help there would be very welcome. what i mean is, quite literally, what happens to my incoming mail and junk that still comes via snail mail – how would one (ever) direct it to zumbox’s inbox interface? that part is very hard to understand and there are no visual explanations…feels very “outgoing” right now…the risk here is that some marketer will load a million names and places, blast out a million pieces of lit, and then a million people will never see a notification that they have new mail that’s been scanned in….
Dave: Your USPS mail and Zumbox mail are independent systems. The transition requires that those companies that send you mail start to adopt the Zumbox service (for free), which will then give you the option to stop getting paper. When they send you a bill or statement via Zumbox, you click “Do Not Papermail”, and that stops the paper version from being sent to you any longer.
But the mail is never scanned. Mail senders, such as your insurance company, will simply send you the digital version of your statement w/o having to print or scan it at all. That’s how all mail works in the Zumbox system. It’s totally paperless.
Suggestions:
1) Hire VP of Marketing right away, as you need their help. Your brilliant idea should be significantly better presented on your website.
2) Let your users help you recruite qualified mail senders as follows:
- Offer a pdf on your website that users can download and print, that explains Zumbox benefits to qualified mail senders.
- Users can then include printed pdf in correspondance they mail to qualified mail senders (paying bills, etc…).
You keep referring tot he fact that Zumbox will be free to qualified mail senders. How much wil it be for users? I now have a Zumbox… assuming I start getting my mail digitally and sign up for paperless options with my qualified mail senders, when the beta ends, what are my choices? To pay an at-present unknown fee, which may or may notbe acceptable to me, or having to undo all the effort I went to to set up paperless?
@Dianne – I 100% agree. I would assume that being a user of Zumbox would be free as in the USPS world. After all, it doesn’t cost me anything to RECEIVE mail.
@Zumbox – I am on the same page as everyone else. This is a GREAT idea and I am a large supporter of a paperless world, but there is a lot of missing information here.
For one, if I send a litter to a person who has not yet registered on Zumbox, is there any notification to that person that there are letters waiting in their mailbox? Maybe if a letter was sent via Zumbox, then it would be up to Zumbox to notify that person in the hopes of them becoming a member?
A solution like this could really be driven my current members to get more and more people into Zumbox.
that is my $0.02.
Hello
I love the Zumbox idea,however where I am getting lost is how is Zumbox going to get businesses like Bank of America,employers and the like to use it.
Many companies,such as Bank of America refuse customers emails suggesting new technologies
Thanks
Avguste: Companies like BofA have spent a lot of money trying to convince customers to use pure online bill pay with little success. Adoption rates are in the single digits. Zumbox is a much easier and familiar way for people to migrate from paper to paperless. So we’re confident companies like BofA will start by testing Zumbox and find that the adoption rates are much higher, which means they’ll be saving a lot of money…not to mention trees.
We’ll do our best to contact these companies, and we’ll soon provide some tools that customers can use to nudge companies toward our more cost effective and environmentally friendly way to send postal mail.
Dale: Currently, you have to send the recipient a separate e-mail to let them know that you’ve sent mail to their Zumbox. The feature you recommend is something we’re considering. Thanks for the suggestion! It’s a great idea.