Informed This, Informed That
March 30, 2016   Karen Bartram

USPS gets all digital at National Postal Forum The National Postal Forum wrapped up in Nashville last week, and it was one of the best attended in quite a while – with more than 4,000 attendees. The big theme this year was the Postal Service’s Digital Strategy. The stars of this strategy? Informed Delivery, and Informed Visibility. It’s easy to get the names confused, but they are two very different services. Informed Delivery – formerly My USPS Mail, formerly Real Mail Notifications – refers to the Postal Service sending an email notification to consumers telling them, along with pictures, what mail will be waiting in their mailbox when they get home. What fun! Seriously, though, this is Big Deal technology that could well open up a new marketing channel. In addition to those black and white images of their mail pieces, the Postal Service will also allow mailers to include clickable ads in those notifications. The results from early pilot test have been dramatic in terms of open rates and response. The Postal Service intends to open the program to all US addresses by 2017, but myriad issues remain including privacy issues and pricing policies. Still, this is technology to watch in the coming years.  Expect SnailWorks to be at the cutting edge, adding this exciting new channel to our multi-channel campaigns as soon as it is rolled out. Informed Visibility is less dramatic but also important. Effectively, it is the next step in the IMb Tracing program that has powered all mail tracking services (including SnailWorks) for years. The Postal Service will be adding new scan events – handling units and containers (trays and pallets to humans) and bundles.  There will also be time-of-day delivery information available on delivery, and much less delay in transmitting this data. More evolutionary than revolutionary, Informed Delivery is an important improvement in the tracking and visibility of mail as it travels through the Postal Service.  As with Informed Delivery, there are a lot of details to be resolved. A July rollout has been suggested, but we expect a much longer shake-out period before the system is truly ready for prime-time. Nonetheless, count on SnailWorks to leverage this new data as it becomes available to make our tracking even more effective. We will be going into more detail on both of these services in future newsletters, white papers, and webinars. Stay tuned! And stay, umm….informed.

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