9 Reasons Why Informed Delivery Should Be a No-Brainer for B2C Companies
allocating resources toward a potentially large win while tending to the smaller wins that are
proven to keep your business afloat. While the USPS® Informed Delivery service may not turn into
a home run play, the opportunities it presents to strengthen your brand and get you noticed are
too good to ignore.
Image credit: USPS.com
At Modern Postcard, we are focused on testing new ideas and achieving incremental
improvement. After writing about Informed Delivery a few months back and observing that few
companies are taking advantage of its latest features, we wanted to reiterate how the program’s
2017 enhancements can help get your business on the scoreboard.
Quick Recap
Informed Delivery is a digital program that enables consumers to preview letters and packages
en-route to their homes either by email notifications or an on line dashboard. The original
program only supported grayscale scans of mail pieces. Now, the program’s advanced features
(launched mid-2017) empower businesses to promote themselves with full-color images, special
messaging and website links for prospects to take immediate action.
Our Evaluation
To illustrate how the program works and appears to consumers in real life, take a look at the sideby-
side comparison below of a colleague’s Informed Delivery email notifications. These emails
arrived a few days before our A/8 test mailers were delivered. Test Card A utilized the latest
marketing perks of Informed Delivery, while Test Card B was mailed out normally without
submitting images or links through the program.
Test Card A: By creating a graphic and clickable call to action, we were able to stand out from the sea of grayscale mailers and provide recip ients with an instant resource to learn more.
Test Card B: Since we did not take advantage of the enhanced service, recipients only received a grayscale scan of the backside of the mail piece.
The visual difference between the two emails is eye opening and could be a game changer for
how your business decides to leverage this special USPS program. Below, we’ve compiled the top
9 reasons Informed Delivery, and the latest enhancement, may be the base hit you need:
- 1. Captive Audience: With over 8.3 million households signed up for this service, and 95% of
the audience viewing their notifications every day*, your mail piece is in front of recipients
who requested email alerts. - 2. Additional Touchpoint: Whether you are mailing to clients or prospects, multiple
impressions increase your likelihood of securing the next sale. - 3. Additional Channel: Simply by knowing a consumer’s address, you can reach them
digitally. - 4. Get Noticed: Your mail piece is already being scanned and included in Informed Delivery
alerts, but unless you are taking advantage of the enhanced feature, it is living in a sea of
grayscale scans and is easily overlooked. With the color feature, your piece will stand out. - 5. Increase Engagement: The newest updates allow recip ients to click on a call to action that
can quickly direct them to a coupon or landing page. This interactive element drives
consumer engagement and helps increase response. - 6. Ease of Implementation: When working with Modern, we help prepare your graphics to
the required specifications and then we work with the USPS to implement the campaign. - 7. Simple to Estimate Your Potential Reach: Do you want to be sure your recipients are
enrolled in the Informed Delivery program before entertaining this enhanced channel?
Modern can work with the USPS to supply you with a pre-campaign saturation report to
evaluate the Informed Delivery reach. - 8. Clean Analytics: Modern can provide a post-campaign summary report that aggregates
number of pieces, emails delivered, emails opened and click-th roughs from your Informed
Delivery alert. - 9. Ease of Use for Recipients: The benefit of having a physical print piece delivered to your
audience has immense staying power. Couple this with the advantage of allowing your
audience to respond simply by clicking a link – and you may have found your base hit.
If you are a B2C marketer who embraces untapped potential, we suggest you give the enhanced
feature a try! Are you interested in participating in tests we are running? Please email us
at sales@modernpostcard.com for more details. For more information on Informed Delivery, visit the USPS site.
Call a Direct Marketing Specialist at 800.959.8365.