Do you take advantage of the United States Postal Service’s Informed Delivery service? If not, what are you waiting for?
What is Informed Delivery?
Informed Delivery is a free service offered by the USPS. Consumers sign up, and every morning they receive an email with black-and-white images of the mail that will be arriving that day. In addition, you can include a “ride along” image and clickable link, for an even more relevant and impactful message. Over 15 million people have signed up for this free service as of January 2019 and it usage is only increasing!
How does it work?
The USPS is scanning the mail during mail processing. With Informed Delivery, it re-purposes those images into a user-friendly Informed Delivery Digest that adds even greater value to the mail.
This is great for marketers. By being given a heads-up on what’s arriving in their mailboxes each day, consumers can plan. They might not plan to be home for a bill to arrive, but they might plan to be home for a check, a letter from Grandma… or a great marketing offer.
Informed Delivery can also change consumer behavior. Say someone is planning to go out Saturday morning to purchase a couch. They intend to go to the furniture store right next to their home, but that morning, they see their Informed Delivery Digest with a coupon from your store a little further away. They decide to wait until the mail arrives to use the coupon rather than shopping at your competitor’s store as they’d planned.
How you can take advantage of this new tool
Is there anything you need to do differently to take advantage of Informed Delivery? No, but there are some tricks to make it more effective.
- Informed Delivery uses images of the front of each mail piece, so if you are mailing envelopes, don’t just think about the contents. Design your promotion with the front of the envelope in mind, too.
- Make a clear, compelling version of your full offer visible on the front of the mail piece so it shows up in the Informed Delivery Digest.
- Consider using postcards where the entire offer is captured in the Informed Delivery image rather than just elements visible on the envelope.
- Hone your messaging, incentive, and call to action so they can be effectively communicated in an envelope-sized space.
- Add images to the outside of the envelope to increase the stopping power of the digital image, as well as the printed one.
