Mail takes planning. And election mail is no exception. With national elections ahead, the Postal Service is working to raise awareness of its election mail program. The goal is to inform election officials about postal products and services available to them and how to best use the mail during an election cycle.

The Postal Service and the Election Center, an organization of voter registrars and other election officials, can provide state and county election officials across the country with everything they need to know about the mail.

Election officials can go online to usps.com/electionmail for information on topics ranging from mailpiece design to addressing to working with local Post Offices.

When a retail sporting goods chain in New England needed an integrated shipping solution to complement its customer service policy, the company turned to the Postal Service, and the retailer says, "It was a home run for us!"

Olympia Sports, based in Portland, ME, operates more than 160 stores throughout the Northeast that sell sporting goods, athletic footwear and apparel. Company officials say they pride themselves on an "above-and-beyond" customer service policy. When a customer can't find the right size or color at one store, inventory at every other store is checked. If found, the item is shipped directly to the home and, in most cases, at no cost to the consumer.

Before it switched from another carrier to the Postal Service, the company had to keep separate accounts for each location and "we couldn't integrate the shipments with our software so we were dealing with hundreds of paper invoices each month," says Paul Fitzpatrick, director of operations and distribution for Olympia Sports. "We were having sales clerks write the shipping labels and bills by hand. It was a logistics nightmare! That's when we called in USPS to pinch hit."

The company joined the USPS team and began using Endicia's label server software to process shipments. The retailer just packs the item and prints a USPS shipping label from point-of-sale software integrated with the Endicia label server.