It’s difficult to ignore the rise of direct mail digitising. With the increase in technology, people are now using to receiving information online instead of through direct mail. But there are still many businesses that are using direct mail as part of their marketing strategy.
Direct mail is the most tried and true marketing strategy for all sizes of businesses. Although the medium has detract from and ignored by large companies, small businesses are still leveraging it to their advantage. But technology has changed the way people interact with direct mail. You can combine your direct mail pieces with digital technology to help you get more out of your dollars spent on marketing.
Customers expect to receive packages as quickly as possible and also the notification of a package delivery when that package is head their way. This led some companies to offer a particular service called Informed Delivery.
Informed Delivery allows a customer to view the packages headed their way, the time it will arrive, and the route the delivery person is going to take to reach their location. Adding USPS informed delivery to your direct mail strategy will help you improve your direct mail conversion rates and the return on marketing investment.
Informed Delivery is a free service available to U.S. residents that deliver a digital preview of your mail to your device. This service will allow you to scan your mail and decide which correspondence to prioritise and which one to throw away.
How Informed Delivery creates value for the audience?
The upshot is that Informed Delivery provides significant value to the audience by helping them stay on top of their mail, so they don’t miss any delivery or mail, deterring theft.
Informed Delivery is handy for busy people who need more time to check their mail. By digitalizing the mail preview process, Informed Delivery by USPS makes it easy and convenient for users to stay on top of their mail.
It can also help users not miss any important deliveries as they can see in advance what’s coming to their address. This also help deter theft, as potential thieves can see that mail is waiting at the consumer’s address.
It is a free and easy-to-use service that provides significant value. By helping them stay on top, deterring theft, and not having any missed deliveries, Informed Delivery is helping make customers’ lives easier and stress-free.
How Direct Mail is Digitising Informed Delivery?
In the new era of direct mail, the USPS mail informed delivery is trying to make it easier for the customer to go from a hard copy world to a digital buying experience.
Informed delivery allows brands to send mail as an option to replace the scanned image of their mailer with a cleaner, digitally uploaded piece along with the call to action.
More than 6,000 brands have run 31,000+ campaigns with Informed Delivery. Many brands find that 15-20% of their customers now use this service, making them more willing to do the extra work to customise campaigns for the digital delivery of their message.
Anonymous Identity
Although the USPS can connect an Informed Delivery customer’s email address and their physical address, the federal government restricts it from sharing the information.
But onboarding companies often help companies find prospects who may interest in certain products or services. There, the informed delivery USPS tracking came to the rescue. It started piloting an “Informed Offers” program that will enable brands to reach audiences who are interest to receive offers or coupons.
To keep the physical address of that audience anonymous, any direct mail sent through Informed Offers gets matched to six-digit licence plates that hide the physical address of the person. The post office’s automated source will decode the licence plate so a mail piece, for example, addressed to Reblin XYZ 123 gets delivered to her house at 456 Window Lane. And the customer sees a mail piece addressed not to them, but to an anonymous location.
One main thing in this pilot – are customers interested? We should balance the two sides of this platform. If they are not interested and not getting on board, it’s not a good platform to do this idea on.
The Informed Delivery service is trying to become more helpful to people. It is available on Alexa, notifying people about package deliveries. Next year, people can get an alert when their mail is about to be delivered – a perk for people with long hikes to mailboxes.
USPS, currently, is also working on Informed Address which would allow people to use email addresses to send physical holiday cards – using the same licence plates to encode and anonymize the real address of the person.
Innovation such as Informed Delivery keeps direct mailing fresh. But other marketing channels also work, so driving investment overall.
There are many people who stop using direct mail for marketing purposes. But within a year they come back as they can’t match the results they get from direct mail in this digital world. In the end, people only prefer what gives them the biggest bang for their buck.
Final Thoughts
Direct mail needs to be more transparent regarding getting a response from the audience. Where everything is now shifted online, businesses should care about the effect of direct mail marketing for their mail campaign.
However, if you’re considering tapping into the power of direct mail marketing, you will have a competitive edge.
Give this guide a detailed read, and you would know how the U.S. postal services informed delivery have offered their users where they can digitise their direct mail.
Today, it is obvious that many businesses ignore direct mail as it requires extra time, effort, money, and increased risks.
With that, we must know that everyone craves that human touch, especially today when most things are robotic or computerised. In such a space, highly personalised and customised direct mail can add to your organisation’s performance. Remember that, you must add extra features and value to your product through direct mail to gain attention from your target customers.