The Informed Delivery Promotion: Increasing Visibility and Reducing Costs!

Informed Delivery has been around long enough to have gained a solid following of people that absolutely swear by it. Even better, this autumn the USPS will be running their annual postal promotion so you can receive a 2% discount on your postage costs while also gaining the expanded visibility benefits of using Informed Delivery!

HOW IT WORKS

If you haven’t tried Informed Delivery before, the service allows recipients to get an electronic scanned image of the mailpieces that will be arriving in their mailbox that day. Most sign up for the email alerts (I check mine every day over breakfast!) and it’s FREE to subscribe – so usership has been increasing by leaps and bounds! As of April 2021, there are close to 40 MILLION subscribers across the country, with about 75% of them receiving the daily emails. For Business Mailers, we have the option to replace the Grayscale scan of the mailpiece with a full-color version AND pair it with a secondary “Ride-Along” image that becomes a link to your organizations’ landing page.

WHY USE INFORMED DELIVERY?

Even without the promotional postage discount, it is easy to see the appeal of Informed Delivery. You get an additional touch point for the mailpiece you worked hard to create AND an additional donation stream for every mailing you send out! At Production Solutions, we created over ONE THOUSAND Informed Delivery campaigns for our clients in 2020 with of half of that total taking part in the Informed Delivery promotion.

One PS client was able to successfully implement Informed Delivery in their Acquisition program, reaching about 7% of that file. However, the results for even that small a quantity resulted in:

• 63% Open Rate for Informed Delivery emails (compared to 15% industry average)
• 57% of those who clicked on the Informed Delivery link made a donation.
• 42% higher average gift on the email donations vs. donations from mail pieces
• One acquisition mailing with Informed Delivery produced the highest overall response of the year!

And that’s before you even factor in the benefits of the promotion! Mailing with an associated Informed Delivery campaign can provide you with a 2% discount on postage, and it is relatively simple to set up (reach out to your Production Solutions contact for more details!)

PS clients saved over $110k in total postage over the course of this promotion in 2020!

WHAT ELSE DO I NEED TO KNOW?

• The Promotion Registration starts on July 15th and runs until November 30th.
• The Promotioruns n itself from September 1st through November 30th. Maildates would need to fall in that period to take part.
• The USPS requires approval of the images and landing page used, so we recommend having those ready for approval at least 2 weeks prior to your maildate (and longer if you haven’t participated in the promotion in past years.)
• Complex campaigns can include different Representative Images, Ride Along Images, and Landing pages for each package in your mailing – but remember, each will require approval from the USPS.
• The simplest way to take part in the promotion is to use one Ride Along image and Landing Page for your entire mailing.
• Reach out to your Production Solutions contact to request more details about image/landing page requirements!