Informed Delivery is Changing for 2020! Are you ready?

The USPS is typically slow to change, but Informed Delivery waits for no one! With little fanfare, the Terms and Conditions for Interactive Informed Delivery campaigns were updated this past January. These changes go into effect IMMEDIATELY, and all marketers must agree to them in order to submit a campaign. While the changes aren’t groundbreaking for the most part, all would be well-served to update their processes as the USPS reserves the right to deactivate any campaign it finds to be in violation of these new regulations!

For those of you who took part in last year’s Informed Delivery postal incentive program, a lot of these rules will be familiar. To start, the Representative Image (if you choose to submit one – remember they are only required for FLATS) must now be a reproduction of one side of the physical mailpiece associated with the Informed Delivery campaign. This jives with the general consensus that these campaigns perform better when the actual mailpiece is shown – either in color or allowing the grayscale scan to show instead. In addition, if you are mailing a FLAT that is in a cover or wrapper, the Representative Image MUST be an image of the organization’s logo.

Moving down to the Ride-Along Image, the assumed precedent that it must directly correlate to the promotion or offer contained in the physical mailpiece is now a concrete rule. More importantly, they are now requiring that the Ride-Along image use the full, allowable size – 300×200 pixels in dimension. f you aren’t using the full space allowed, the image can appear grainy anyway, so this is probably for the best.

Lastly, on the Landing Page, the most vital change is that all URLs submitted must use the secure “HTTPS://” beginning. In addition, all URLs and Links submitted must be free of any malware, viruses or errors. Not that anyone would submit one intentionally (right?), but it is smart to double-check the accuracy of your link prior to submission. And while it seems like common sense, all URLs submitted for an Informed Delivery campaign must lead directly to a landing page directly associated with the actual mailpiece.

As with the Promotions in 2019, all of these campaign components – both images AND the landing page – cannot in any way promote diversion from USPS products or the reduction in physical mail (e.g. Pay Online!). And while it appears that the USPS is close to altering their programming to actually catch some of these changes, they are trusting in the “Honor System” for now – at least until the fall when the Informed Delivery Promotions begin again. Good luck and don’t hesitate to contact Production Solutions with any questions!

Reach out to your Production Solutions contact today to begin running Informed Delivery Interactive Campaigns for all your mailings!