Marketers Discover Growing Way to Reach Consumers: U.S. Postal Service

One of the newest areas marketers are using to reach consumers also happens to be one of the oldest: the U.S. Post Service, which several years ago launched Informed Delivery as a service to households to see via email the items coming to their homes that day.

Users who opt-in to receive email notifications can view their letter-size mailpiece images in their daily digest emails, and also see tracking information about the expected delivery of their packages. In addition, households are able to track package deliveries, leave delivery instructions and schedule redelivery from the online Informed Delivery dashboard.

“Our customers can now use their Informed Delivery emails to see the delivery status of their incoming packages and when they’re expected to arrive,” says Gary Reblin, vice president of production innovation at USPS. “It’s another example of how Informed Delivery is meeting customers’ needs.”

Marketers, however, are also utilizing Informed Delivery to increase the ROI on direct mail spend and provide mailers additional data insights to optimize their marketing spend. Joanne Volkert with Lessiter Media says post-campaign Summary Reports are generated and can be downloaded, providing mailers with the number of users/mail recipients that were sent an email, the email open rate, and the number of click-throughs.

Unprecedented Opportunity To Engage
“Informed Delivery offers mailers an unprecedented opportunity to engage with current or potential customers through synchronized direct mail and digital marketing campaigns,” she says. “Mailers can now provide a full-color representative image to replace the greyscale image, supplemental content — also known as a ride-along image and URL — that shows below the mail piece, allowing users to engage digitally. For example, taking advantage of a promotional offer immediately, renewing a subscription or paying a bill.”

Liza Stevens, a Strategic Account Leader at Salem One, believes that Informed Delivery is a very effective tool for brands to utilize. She says statistics show that 98% of people check their mail daily, and that 73% of U.S. consumers prefer being contacted by brands via direct mail.

“We are told that the average person in the U.S. receives 605 emails per week compared to 16.8 pieces of mail per week,” Stevens says. “Up to 90% of direct mail gets opened, compared to only 20-30% of emails.”

With so many working remotely, she says personal and works email inboxes are blending together. She believes now more than ever is a good time for some DTC brands to look at direct mail. Salem One was an early adopter of Informed Delivery and has watched subscription rates soar to over 30 million across the country.

“Receiving a physical mail piece is a differentiator,” Stevens says. “The mailbox is less cluttered than the email inbox.”

Attractive Response Rates
Ashley Savage Holmes, Director of Marketing for Baesman, says that with nearly 31 million total users signed up for the Informed Delivery program — almost 20% of the population — the response rates are almost too good not to try to reach consumers that way.

“The response rates are astounding, at between 60-80%,” she says. “Coupled with the current 2% discount on postage and the ROI could be staggering for brands. The data shows that users that participate are highly engaged.”

Savage Holmes says those numbers are giving brands the opportunity to create value with increased response rates, which could lead to higher conversion and a better overall customer experience.

The postal service first offered Informed Delivery to parts of Northern Virginia in 2014, and then expanded to the New York City metropolitan area in late 2015 before rolling it out nationally in 2017.

The USPS has been scanning all incoming mail as standard protocol since the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people in the U.S., so Informed Delivery comes at no additional cost to consumers.

The free service sends customers an email with black-and-white images of their mail by 11:00 a.m. EST on the day their mail has been processed for delivery. Mail is never opened, and the photos are only of the outside of the envelope, with the address face side up.

Up to 10 pieces of standard letter-sized mail will be included in the email round-up, with a link directing subscribers to the rest of their mail online if it’s a busy delivery day.

Linking Mail to IP Addresses
Stevens says that now is also a great time to consider Retargeting Mail, where Salem One matches IP addresses of people who have visited a site to a physical address, and then follows up with a relevant direct mail offer based on the pages they searched.

“Using data to target prospects and provide a relevant message or meaningful offer is critical,” she says. “We believe relevant customization should be tied to the customer’s past purchasing history and/or specific interests. We encourage our clients to look at their entire data ecosystem including 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data.”

Baesman cited a successful project they worked on in 2019 with Polaris Direct’s holiday card. With many of Polaris Direct clients being Fortune 500 companies, Savage Holmes says they are often unable to accept holiday gifts from vendors. In the spirit of giving and in appreciation for their partnership, Polaris Direct wanted to do something more than just a holiday card, but were mindful of corporate gift-giving policies. Recipients were urged to select a charity for Polaris Direct to donate to on their behalf.

The overall theme of the mailer was “Spreading the Cheer,” where the addressee received a personalized holiday card driving them to a unique landing page where they could select the charity of their choice for Polaris to make a donation on their behalf. The kit included two additional art designed “blank” holiday postcards that the recipient could use to “Spread the Cheer” by sending their own season’s greetings.

Savage Holmes says the campaign was integrated with an email that included the same messaging along with an embedded link to a landing page, as well as a video message as well.

“Informed Delivery was incorporated to increase the reach of the campaign through a synchronized physical and digital touchpoint,” she says. “The result for Informed Delivery was an 83% open rate and an 89% click-through rate.”

Relevant as a Multichannel Approach
Stevens says that direct mail is critical in a multichannel approach to reaching consumers and building loyalty and engagement.

“With Informed Delivery, the resurgence of QR codes and Retargeting Mail, consumers can have a tactile hands-on experience with the mail piece and then easily engage online,” she says. “Direct mail not only provides an additional marketing channel, but it is a completely different media.”

While multichannel can include social media, email, web ads and others, Stevens says all those channels take place in an online environment. With a multichannel approach that includes direct mail, she feels marketers are seeing significant growth in response rates.

“With the inclusion of direct mail, consumers can now respond how they want to respond,” she says. “As a result, some campaigns are seeing a 68% increase in online visits, 39% increased traffic to a physical store or business location, 40% conversion rates and a 63% increase in response rates.”

As an example, one of Salem One’s larger home-improvement clients reported a $45,000 sale recently to a customer who attributed their response directly to their Informed Delivery Campaign. Stevens says they used the interactive link in Informed Delivery to schedule a free consultation.

Another Salem One client — a higher-end restaurant chain — received over 500 reservations across the country via their Informed Delivery “reservation” link.

“Effectively connecting physical and digital consumer marketing engagements can be complex,” Stevens says. “Lots of analytics and attribution models involved, but nothing beats self-reported responses like these where the consumer attributes action to a specific channel.”
 

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