The Lowdown on Informed Delivery
Who wants a discount? We’ve got one for you! The USPS is offering a 4% discount on postage for use of Informed Delivery from August 2022 — December 2022.
So, what is Informed Delivery? According to the USPS — Informed Delivery is an optional, free feature that gives residential consumers the ability to digitally preview their mail and manage their packages from one convenient location.
Through Informed Delivery, users/subscribers can view images of letter-size mail and color images from participating mailers via email notification, online dashboard at informeddelivery.usps.com, or USPS Mobile® app.
Package tracking information on Priority Mail Express®, Priority Mail®, and other parcels is available as well.
This feature offers consumers the convenience of seeing what is coming to their mailbox and PO Box — whenever, wherever — even while traveling.
So, to participate in Informed Delivery, you must sign up through USPS.com. You are then given two options — one to subscribe to email service or one to view through a dashboard. When you subscribe to the email service, you’ll receive a daily email from USPS showing what mail pieces are arriving in your mail that day.
A few samples are included below of what’s considered “natural” or “organic” Informed Delivery (more on that soon):
And another example of an email I’ve received is:
So, you ask, which one of these is Informed Delivery? The answer is both — but starting in August, only the second one will get you the 4% discount on postage.
The first email sample is natural or organic Informed Delivery, meaning they are simply images of mail pieces arriving, and they don’t have access to a live URL for the organization.
You’ll notice that the second email, which includes a color image with a smaller image associated with it, gives access to a live URL that lands on an active website in one touch of a button.
To optimize your performance during this discounted period, there are a few steps that you should take:
First, run your mail file though a pre-campaign analysis report. We ran this report for one of our clients and this is what we found:
Total Delivery Points: 54,677 – this is the total number of records run through the analysis
Informed Delivery Users: 12,675 – this is the total number of records that have signed up for ID out of the total number of records in the file, and they all have access to the USPS Dashboard
Email-Enabled Users: 9,414 – this is the total number of records out of the 12,675 above that have signed up for ID and get the daily email
Second, decide if you want to do this. If the answer is yes (and during discount time, why not??), it’s time to create the images and update your IMB to include the Informed Delivery trigger so that when the mail pieces deliver, they are flagged and appear at or near the top in the daily email/dashboard, including the images provided and access to the URL for direct donation.
The Post Office does have three requirements once the data file and IMB have been modified to participate in Informed Delivery:
Representative image: To obtain this discount, the image must be representative of the mail piece received.
Ride-along image: this is the smaller box in the sample, and it must coincide with the campaign and the representative image or copy of the mail piece. This must contain the CTA for the piece and contain a combination of imagery and text (not one or the other). This will also be the image that clicks through to the landing page.
Live, active campaign-targeted URL: This URL must be live and active before the campaign mails.
A word to the wise — lots of folks are using mobile devices to view these emails. With that in mind, note that copy-heavy, small, cramped text and low-contrast color can be difficult to see, and drive lower engagement and conversion for the recipient. Keeping this simple is key.
How will our clients realize the savings from this discount? The discount is directly applied to the final postage amount required to mail the package. A discounted line-item will appear on the final invoice showing the refund amount during this promotion. So, for 100,000 pieces that are mailing at $.155 each, the discount is $.0062 a piece, or $620 savings for that campaign, which you should see on your final invoice.