So you don’t have to, we love attending call after call on a variety of Postal topics, our favorite being User Group 12 – Informed Delivery. In the most recent meeting, a passel of updates were announced. Here are some of the highlights:
Issues with the Informed Delivery Promotion
Registration for the ID promotion is underway, although the promotion itself doesn’t begin until September 1. Already, significant delays are being reported in getting campaign approvals, with some users reporting weeks’ long delays. New staff and a lot of interest have apparently combined to create a slowdown. Moral of the story: Get your campaigns in early!
Personalized URLs (sort of) in Ride-Along Ads Available August 27
Already in pilot, effective August 27 Informed Delivery will append the mail piece MID and Serial Number to the URL associated with each Ride-Along. This can allow every click of the ad to have its own unique URL, allowing personalization of the landing page, as well as enhanced tracking and prepopulating of forms. It’s not technically a PURL, since you cannot customize the URL, but it functions the same. It’s complicated, but good. Generally. Therefore, the next new feature:
Opt-Outs for Social Sharing and URL Personalization
Don’t want stuff appended to your URL? Don’t want your ID ad shared on Facebook? OK, soon, you will be able to opt out. Initially it will need to be done by the ID Help Desk (we can help) but will be built into the USPS ID Portal by the end of the year (we can still help you.)
Email Open Rate Reporting
An unopened email is like a day without sunshine. That’s why the Informed Delivery program likes to share open rates. But with the release of iOS 15 this fall, Apple device users will be able to block that information going back to the sender – it’s called pixel reporting, which is not nearly as cute as it sounds. Your emails will still get through (including Informed Delivery emails) but you will not know for sure which were opened. So, the sun will still shine, but Apple’s kinda throwing a cloud under it. About 25% of Informed Delivery subscribers are viewing their email through Apple Mail.
Image Creation Tool – In Pilot
In the coming months, the Postal Service will be developing a tool in the Mailer Campaign Portal to help create templated Ride-Along ads. Brought to you by the same people who brought you the Business Customer Gateway.
We have an even better tool. We call it SnailWorks.
Informed Greetings – In Pilot
Whoa! This is different. Soon, consumers can create their own Informed Delivery ads for their birthday cards to Aunt Millie. USPS will help consumers create the ad, and provide a label with said Aunt’s name, address, and IMb, so she can anticipate her card. The Postal Service hopes to boost ungrateful grandchildren thank-you response rates.
The Postal Service does not really expect a lot of uptakes on the service (although it will be free) but they are really hoping to leverage the technology to enable variable images in commercial Informed Delivery in the future (which may not be so free.)
ID Reminders
This isn’t new – it’s been in pilot for a while – but USPS does expect to roll out the ID Reminders feature to all subscribers by the holidays. This will allow consumers to tag ID ads to reappear on their phone at a future date to remind them to respond. Twenty percent of subscribers currently have that capability; soon it shall include all y’all.
There you have it. Moss never grows on a rolling Informed Deliver program. It keeps getting a little weirder. But, to quote Hunter S. Thompson, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
And you can always turn to the pros at SnailWorks.