A World with Informed Visibility
April 28, 2016   Karen Bartram

It's a lot like the world we're currently in...

The Postal Service made a big splash at the National Postal Forum in Nashville last month with the roll-out of its “informed” products – Informed Visibility and Informed Delivery.  Apparently there was a 2-for-1 sale at the word store… You can read more about these two services in last month’s Under the Shell, or watch the webinar we did with NAAD. Today we want to focus on Informed Visibility, the next iteration of Intelligent Mail tracing.  It is touted as an expansive new view of the movement of your mail through the Postal Service.  OK, it is that to some extent, but as we formulate our strategies for dealing with this new flood of data we think it is important to maintain some perspective.  In practical terms, Informed Visibility is an incremental enhancement of an existing system.  So let’s all just stay calm, OK? Here are the features being added under IV, assuming all goes as planned:
  • You will see when trays and pallets were inducted into the system, and where they are;
  • You will able to ascertain approximately what time of day your mail was delivered;
  • Through bundle scans, you will have a more comprehensive idea of when your flat mail is being delivered;
  • You will be able to get scan data more often – every 15 minutes;
  • Scan data may be more current – greatly reduced latency.
These are all certainly enhancements, but they hardly revolutionize direct mail the way mail tracking did when it was first introduced in the late 1990’s.  As we look at this new data, and work on developing products that leverage new information, there’s not always a lot of meat there – but there is a lot of sizzle. The key question to us is, and always has been, why do you track mail?  The obvious answer is: to know when it got delivered.  There is real value in knowing when your mail is being delivered.  You can coordinate other marketing, you can prepare for response, you can schedule your production better – all of this comes from knowing when mail is delivered, and the existing system, IMb Tracing does a pretty good job of telling you that.  On letters, we typically see scan rates well above 95%, and that is a pretty precise indicator of when the piece was actually delivered.  IV may enhance that a bit – identifying when mail was held back by load leveling, or missed being scanned – but it will be perfecting something that’s pretty good already. Is there any appreciable difference in ROI on 99% accuracy vs 97%?  Again this is just scan accuracy – IV does nothing to improve mail delivery. On flats we do anticipate a marked improvement on scan rates and accuracy, but even that will be subject to a lot of interpretation and analysis.  “Assumed” scans and “Logical Delivery Events” are different than actual piece scans. We’ll need to evaluate the data before we trust it too much. Continuous data feeds and time of delivery are fun, but is there a lot of value there?  Letters and flats are very different than parcels.  Most people do not look at their mail as soon as it is delivered – they look at it when they go to get their mail.  Time of day does not strike us as a meaningful metric, although only testing will show for certain.  You will be able to measure time of delivery and cross match that against response to see if maybe folks respond better if their mail is delivered in the morning, but what are you going to do with that information?  You can’t control what time mail is delivered. Similarly, a continuous stream of data will allow you to watch mail get delivered during the day, but again, to what end?  In most cases we know today, early in the morning, what mail is going to be delivered on any given day (at least for letters.)  We like actionable data at SnailWorks – we’re not sure this is. As to tracking pallets and trays?  If you’re not drop shipping mail, this may not be very meaningful, and even if you are, a lot of data is already available from logistics providers.  If you’re using a commingler, you don’t really have any trays or pallets to track. Large volume flats mailers, particularly those creating 5-digit and carrier-route bundles should be able to get useful information from bundle scans, so we are looking forward to seeing that data.  High volume flats really do lack visibility in today’s tracking, so IV should help to fill in that gap in mail tracking. So what will Informed Visibility mean to you?  IV should bring improved visibility and better tools for tracking and coordinating with your mail.  You will still need a partner in managing this enhanced flow of data, and count on SnailWorks to be on the forefront.  Look for enhancements in our reporting in the second half of 2016, taking advantage of new available data.  We will keep our clients informed on the rollout of IV, of the successes and challenges, though this newsletter, webinars and white papers.  As always, we will work to sort out the usable data from the hype, and give you the tools you need to make your mail as effective as possible.

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