When you send out 100,000 pieces of mail you naturally want to track it. It’s a big investment, and outbound tracking gives you better control over the entire process.
But what about the responses generated by that mail? The return on the investment you made is in the response. And, in almost every case, a portion of that response will come in the mail. There are still some consumers who prefer to mail in their utility and credit card payments. Nonprofit fundraisers know that the biggest donations they receive tend to be the checks in envelopes. Your reply mail is very high value mail, and there are a lot of compelling reasons to track it:
- An instant measure of response – every day see how many people mail in a check.
- Identify issues and delays in reply processing. If there is a discrepancy between the mail tracked and caging house counts it tells you there may be issues to investigate. BRM has been known to get hung up at the destination post office and other places along the way.
- Minimize follow-up expenses. For utility bills, you can identify whose check is in the mail before you take costly adverse actions.
- Monitor and manage cash flow. If you know your average donation or amount invoiced, you can anticipate cash flow.
The mechanics of inbound tracking are a little different but not difficult. There are really two primary types of inbound tracking: Static IMb, and Dynamic IMb. The IMB is, of course, the Intelligent Mail barcode.
STATIC IMb TRACKING
By “static” we mean that each piece has the same IMb. This is a typical BRE that has been offset printed. Even though all the incoming pieces appear identical, the Postal Service assigns a unique ID to each piece of mail, so we can tell one from another. This allows us to know how many unique responses have been mailed each day – your response. We may not know who responded, but we know how many, and when.
It is a simple matter to make your BREs trackable – it just involves flipping a few bars in the IMb. For SnailWorks customers, we provide BRE artwork with the modified trackable barcode. You print the envelopes, and we track them. Easy.
BTW, you can still use the same BREs for mail you don’t want to track. They work either way.
DYNAMIC IMb TRACKING
With dynamic IMbs, each inbound piece gets its own unique barcode. This is often achieved by having a windowed reply envelope with the return IMb showing through when the consumer inserts the remittance advice into the envelope with their payment. Alternatively, each BRE may be printed uniquely with its own IMb and matched to the outgoing piece. More and more equipment is appearing in the field that can support this process in line. This is typically the technology used to track ballots.
With SnailWorks tracking, in most cases we will create a round-trip job that includes two barcodes for each record – one for outbound, and one for inbound. From there we can provide suppression lists, anticipated revenue, and more.
2025 WILL BE A BIG YEAR FOR INBOUND MAIL
The Postal Service is offering a discount in its IMbA promotion this year for Business Reply Mail that uses the BRM automated accounting system, and the discount will be bigger if the mailer can use a unique barcode on each piece. Today’s high-speed inkjet envelope presses make it much more economical to create these unique envelopes. Ideally it is best if you can match the reply mail back to an individual, but even short of that, unique dynamic IMbs on each inbound piece will provide for more accurate tracking.
The other big deal for reply mail in 2025 is that SnailWorks will be reworking its inbound tracking systems to provide better reporting and support more kinds of mail.
YOUR MOST VALUABLE MAIL
Every piece of mail you send is an investment, and the reply mail is your return on that investment. Every single piece of reply mail is essential. You probably sent out hundreds of pieces of mail to get that envelope that’s headed your way. Track it!