Did you know that the US Postal Service has a digital multichannel advertising program hiding in plain sight? It’s incorporated into its USPS Informed Delivery service, and if you send mailings to your clients and prospects – it’s well worth looking into. (Pssst – Lighthouse Marketing can help you with this!)
Informed Delivery is a public-facing service built on the internal process that the USPS uses to scan each mailpiece to route mail through their system. Once scanned, the USPS aggregates the pieces being sent to you that day and sends an image-driven summary via email of exactly what will be arriving in your mailbox today.
If you haven’t heard of or signed up for it, you’re in the majority. As this report from the post office says, only about 16% of US households have registered for online portal access, and only 12% of households have signed up for the daily email.
Here’s the really cool thing – all the scans are in black and white, but if you set up an Informed Delivery campaign as part of your strategy, you can deliver your scan in COLOR to differentiate what you are sending, PLUS incorporate a clickable image/link that directs the consumer to a website of your choice.
This advertising medium can be used for B2B sales, but is mostly used to market to consumers. If you market to consumers, you should tell everyone you know to sign up for informed delivery, because the USPS has embedded this trackable digital advertising tool into the program, and (as of now), there’s absolutely no cost to use it!
In the video below, my good friend Bill Fetter describes the basics of how it works, and some of the coolest features of the digital program.
Here are are some possible online-offline marketing plays you can use this for:
Every Door Direct Mail: Since EDDM is based on geography and not your own list, this is an opportunity to augment your offer designed to generate foot traffic with an interactive campaign to identify those local prospects with specific interest.
Specific Mailing Lists: Because this technology is based on the unique fingerprint of each mail piece, you can actually track the specific online responses of individuals on your mailing list. There’s also the ability to do a form of campaign testing of different calls to action.
Remember, this is only available for households at this point, so it’s really only appropriate for B2C, or B2B where you are communicating with the client at their home address.
If you want to find out more on how to use USPS Informed Delivery as an advertiser, here are some links:
- The Business Portal Page
- A Presentation on the features of the interactive campaign program
- Spreadsheet on the number of households signed up for informed delivery by geography
The USPS’s documentation on how you’re supposed to execute these programs is a little basic. Among the things that they describe in the 30 pages of instructions is how to set up excel spreadsheets to upload your campaigns.
Aside from the setup, it’s a great program to use. Sign up as a consumer for informed delivery here: https://informeddelivery.usps.com
For more information on how Lighthouse can help you use Informed Delivery to help your organization, shoot us an email!
