Informed Delivery Expands the Reach of Direct Marketing

Continuing the conversation to help our clients and colleagues gain insight into the benefits of the USPS Informed Delivery program, let’s look into how direct marketers can use the program to add touch points, increase impressions and digitize direct mail campaigns.

From our last post, we learned Informed Delivery provides eligible residential U.S. Postal customers with a digital preview of their household’s incoming mail scheduled to arrive soon. Users can view greyscale images of the exterior, address side of incoming letter-sized mail pieces and track their packages in one convenient location via email, an online dashboard or mobile app.

To better understand the advantages of Informed Delivery for direct marketers and advertisers, I recently shared a conversation with a direct marketing expert. As the Director of Digital Sales for Kessler Creative, a top national direct marketing agency headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida; Chuck Flantroy is highly skilled at getting the most out of digital marketing and direct mail programs. Here’s what I’ve learned…

In addition to the value and convenience Informed Delivery brings to postal customers, direct marketing advertisers will absolutely love Informed Delivery.

Rather than waiting for the physical replies to show up from their latest mailing, marketers can see the reply envelopes as soon as the consumer drops it back into the mail. Certainly, marketers can get digital reports of bar coded reply mail, but Informed Delivery shows which replies are on the way as there may be multiple outgoing/incoming mailings occurring simultaneously.

Printed Mail Transverses Digital Optimization

Chuck continued to explain, businesses and nonprofits who are mailing campaigns can now supply a “representative image” which is a full-color digital image which replaces the piece’s grayscale image within the Informed Delivery platform. Also, advertisers may provide an interactive digital “ride-along” ad with the mail piece’s digital preview.
This is where direct mail crosses into the  realm of digital marketing. This not only adds impressions to direct mail campaigns, it enhances the prospect customer’s call-to-action and reinforces the direct marketer’s message. It also allows the message to be changed and enhanced while the mail is actually en route to the prospect customers.

Informed Delivery provides an exciting, powerful new marketing tool offering:

• An email open rate of more than 70%^* adding brand touches to advertiser’s targeted prospects.
• Generates multiple impressions from a single mail piece – digital & physical.
• Drives consumer response with interactive content related to mail piece.
• Bridges the gaps between direct mail, digital advertising and web traffic.
• Provides a new channel optimizing web visitation.
• Potential increase your ROI

In the fast-moving world in which we live today, new products and services come along every day. It’s rare however to find a new medium which can transverse and join new and traditional marketing channels to increase advertiser impressions, drive web traffic and boost response rates.

Informed Delivery is an amazing new tool for both postal customers and marketers alike. If you have any questions or would like assistance getting started, let us know.

Useful Information & Links:

Informed Delivery for Personal Use

Informed Delivery for Businesses

Informed Delivery for mobile devices available free for iOS, Android, and Windows.

Let’s chat about getting the most out of your digital direct mail programs. Contact us anytime: Kessler Creative • Results Driven Marketing Jacksonville, Florida • Main: 800.394.9393 Online: http://www.kesslercreative.com

^{*United States Postal Service data – Images from http://usps.com}