From Letter Carrier to Direct Mail Innovator
How Lee Garvey’s Vision for Click2Mail Helps Businesses Mail Smarter
By Shep Altshuler
Lee Garvey’s journey from a postal route in Arlington, Virginia, to founding Click2Mail is a study in quiet innovation and deep customer empathy. Born in North Carolina and raised in Washington, D.C., Garvey’s professional life began shortly after high school when he joined the U.S. Postal Service as a letter carrier. “I wasn’t ready to go to college,” he recalled. “I needed a job.”
He spent two years delivering mail before giving higher education another shot, enrolling at a private college in upstate New York. He studied general undergraduate courses and dabbled in international law with hopes of becoming a lawyer—but that path, too, would be short-lived.
After a year, he returned to Arlington and to the Postal Service. “I needed income, and I had really enjoyed working for the Postal Service,” he said. “It was outdoors, active, and challenging.”
Learning the System—and the People
Initially assigned as a substitute carrier, Garvey worked across Arlington County before landing a permanent route. “Once I had my own route, it was much more personal,” he said. “I got to know people. It was engaging on a human level.”
Over time, Garvey moved into supervisory and eventually station management roles. “I learned to manage people, time, and operations,” he said. “I learned everything there is to know about mail—how it moves and how it gets where it’s going.”
Despite the sense of purpose, Garvey reached a point where advancement stalled. “Once I got to station manager, the only thing above me was postmaster,” he said. “It felt like a dead end.”
That led him to a new opportunity—sales.
Becoming a Trusted Guide for Businesses
Garvey didn’t consider himself a natural salesperson, but the job—working with businesses across Northern Virginia—played to his strengths. “A lot of people have a hard time using the Postal Service,” he said. “My role was as much about education as it was about sales.”
He showed real estate agents, nonprofits, and small businesses how to prepare and mail efficiently. “I taught them about mail classes, discounts, bulk mailings. I helped them discover what they needed to do.”
This consultative style laid the foundation for long-term relationships and became one of his trademarks—while informing his vision for Click2Mail.
Local Routes to Global Reach
Garvey’s next role took him to Postal Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he served national-level clients. That widened his view of the system and exposed him to how the USPS served complex organizations.
From there, he transitioned into international sales. He traveled extensively, liaising with postal services around the globe and gaining a global perspective on how other countries tackled postal delivery challenges. “I got to see some very creative solutions,” he said.
A Tech Mind in a Paper World
By the mid-1990s, Garvey joined the Postal Service’s Technology Innovation Group. It was a pivotal moment. “Our mandate was to explore how the Postal Service could remain relevant in the 21st century,” he explained. “We were looking at digital payments, digital Certified mail, things like that.”
Though Garvey lacked formal training in technology, he had long been a hobbyist. “I’ve always been a nerd,” he said. “In 1984, I bought one of the first Apple Macintosh computers — I loved technology.”
This passion helped him absorb the technical side of his new role, particularly a concept he discovered abroad: hybrid mail.
The Power of Hybrid Mail
In countries like Finland, Italy, and Germany, hybrid mail was gaining traction. The model took digital documents and transformed them into physical mail closer to the destination, cutting down transportation costs and time. “They were using it to deliver things such as phone bills to remote areas,” Garvey explained.
Though the USPS ultimately concluded that its existing logistics network was too efficient to justify wide-scale hybrid mail adoption, Garvey saw a different opportunity: small businesses.
“These businesses didn’t have mailrooms, staff, or know-how,” he said. “But they still needed to send mail.”
How NetPost Inspired an Entrepreneurial Pivot
In 1998, the USPS launched a pilot program called NetPost to test Garvey’s concept. By 2000, it had gone nationwide—but met with limited success. “People just weren’t doing much on the internet yet,” Garvey said.
When USPS leadership changed in 2003, the program was discontinued. However, recognizing its utility and early profitability, the Postal Service allowed Garvey and a few partners to take over its operation as a commercial affiliate.
From NetPost, Click2Mail was born in 2006.
Building Click2Mail with Purpose
Rather than seeking venture capital or trying to become a typical “dot-com”, Garvey built Click2Mail around relationships and utility. “It was never flashy. It was relational,” he said. “I loved helping people. That’s what kept me going.”
Key early team members included the late Matthew Hanna, who helped assemble the company’s foundation; Carly Brown, who still leads customer service; and David Webster, who grew from a support role into IT operations manager.
Click2Mail evolved to offer a cloud-based service where customers upload PDFs and mailing lists, select formats, preview proofs, and let the system handle printing, addressing, sorting, and mailing. There’s no minimum quantity—customers can send 10 postcards or 10,000.
The Click2Mail Advantage
The service has been used by real estate agents, pizza shops, national insurance companies, and government agencies. “It’s all about accessibility,” Garvey explained. “We serve anyone who needs to send mail—whether they’re sending invoices, legal notices, or personalized marketing.”
Security is also a priority. “We’re HIPAA-certified,” he said. “We’ve never sold or shared customer data. Period.”
The company continues to grow with very little paid marketing. “It’s all word of mouth,” Garvey said. “We do email newsletters, some direct mail, a bit of social media—but mostly, our customers find us through other customers.”
Beyond Marketing: EDDM and Automation
Click2Mail also facilitates USPS Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), a useful tool for local outreach. “Say you’re a resort in Park City, Utah,” Garvey offered. “You can target entire neighborhoods within a 200-mile radius—no mailing list needed. You just select the routes on a map.”
More advanced users can integrate automation tools. If you’re using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or Google Sheets, you can trigger personalized mailings for welcome letters, bills, or appointment reminders. “We’re trying to make mail easier, not harder,” Garvey said.
Meeting the Needs of Every Mailer
From color postcards and self-mailers to letters, secure snap packs and ballots, Click2Mail offers it all. “We focus on meeting the needs of every mailer,” Garvey said. That includes return envelopes, business reply options, and mail classes from First Class to Certified.
Click2Mail’s address standardization system even checks for correct ZIP Codes and updates recipient addresses via the USPS National Change of Address (NCOA) database—just before each mailing goes out.
Still Guided by Purpose
Garvey may be at the helm of a highly automated operation, but his vision remains rooted in the same principle that guided him on his early routes in Arlington: helping people. “Technology matters,” he said, “but what really matters is knowing we’re making life easier for someone.”
To learn more about Click2Mail:
Email support@click2mail.com, call 866-665-2787, or visit www.click2mail.com, where you will find a chatbot, tutorials, and knowledge base articles.
The company also maintains a YouTube channel with instructional videos and direct mail strategies at youtube.com/@click2mail.