Ways in which Royal Mail could save its business

With the news that Royal Mail wants to end Saturday delivery, I got to thinking about how I'd try to innovate a way out of the mess they're in.

The facts are that the critical mass of letter delivery has gone. It isn't coming back. Yes, I know your grandad likes receiving his bank statements in the post, and it's occasionally nice to receive a postcard from your mum when she's on holiday, but email and IM have comprehensively won. Sure, vinyl sales are up, but stamp collectors aren't going to sustain this industry.

Royal Mail should embrace this. The US Postal Service offers something called Informed Delivery. They email you a scan of the front of any envelopes they're due to deliver. That - hopefully - tells you if your Very Important Letter is going to arrive today.

The USPS already scans envelopes for internal tracking, so adding a customer facing service probably wasn't the hardest thing to do.

Royal Mail could do that. And possibly even go a step further. Why can't I pay RM to open my main, scan it, then email it to me? If I'm away from home, I get the information I want. If I need the hard copy I can ask for a physical delivery. If I don't, they can shred it.

There are services which do this - but they're mostly focussed on businesses and require you to change your primary address.

Speaking of changing address, why can't RM sell me a virtual address? I know they have a PO Box service (for £400 per year!) but with the rise in Internet shopping, privacy conscious citizens, and fears of identity theft wouldn't it make sense to offer a "PO Box light" option? Or sell one-time disposable addresses? Or let people post your things using only an email address?

Most people don't need deliveries every single day - although I'm old enough to remember the "second post" each day. Perhaps people want to specify when they want their postal mail? I work from home on Mondays and Fridays, so there's no point delivering to me outside those days. Why not let people opt-out of Saturday delivery? Or opt-in to only Saturday delivery?

Hell, combined with envelope scanning, I could tell my postie not to deliver certain items. Let them shred the junk for me! Or let me automatically "return to sender" anything for the people who used to live here.

Ultimately, Royal Mail is right - their only future is in parcel delivery. With, perhaps, a small legacy business for people who can't or won't use email. Any investment they make into innovation for letters is money down the drain.

The saddest thing is; this was inevitable. Even if they'd embraced innovation 20 years ago, that wouldn't have stopped or slowed the decline in their core business. They are selling a steam-powered product in a solar powered world.