Making the Mail More Intelligent

Visibility, predictability and accountability. They are essential to your company’s success and, combined, are the power of the Intelligent Mail^® barcode (IMb^™). Unfortunately, the whole concept of the IMb has been relegated to just that: a barcode; a tracking device. It is so much more than that. It’s an essential tool that allows mailers to monitor service performance and measure delivery statistics. Rather than focusing on the “B” part of the IMb, we need to focus on the "IM," because that’s what the IMb is all about: intelligent mail.

Truly intelligent mail recognizes that direct mail is a physical, high-touch complement to a high-tech marketing campaign. It is a foundation of messaging that is delivered in a predictable manner and has information relevant to the recipient. It can be looked at on the recipient's own terms, at a time that's convenient to them, at a moment when they can consciously choose to review and absorb the information. That is when print media becomes the potential for intelligent mail.

We need to put aside the "barcode" component of the IMb for a moment and focus on how to make mail more intelligent. We make mail intelligent by recognizing its valuable attributes: it’s highly personable, you can hold it in your hand, and it is looked at on the recipient's own terms. Those are key attributes of what mail is all about – especially direct mail. These inherent traits that direct mail possesses make it the perfect foundation for multi-channel marketing, a very effective type of campaign.

The opportunity that exists with this approach is to leverage the foundation of a direct mailpiece and apply the power of the IMb. Employing the three features of the IMb (visibility, predictability, and accountability) allows you to develop a marketing plan that includes strategic timing and relevant information, to a degree that cannot be achieved by any other marketing channel.

Here's what each element is about, and what they add to the direct mail and multi-channel marketing efforts:

Visibility: Timing is everything. The IMb gives you visibility into the mailstream so you can see where the mail is in the mailing network. When you can see where your pieces are, this gives you an opportunity to time multi-channel messaging. As soon as you receive confirmation that a mailpiece has reached the final scan, which is an indication from the Postal Service^™ that it has gone through its last piece of automated processing equipment, the opportunity for multi-channel marketing is triggered. You can get the ball rolling on other channels, such as emails and phone calls that reference the mailpiece that your customers and prospects should have just received.

Predictability: Visibility alone is not enough to truly enable multi-channel marketing. Just because you see that a mailpiece has reached its destination scan, doesn't mean that you know precisely when it will arrive in the recipient's mailbox. For that, you need predictability. Predictability is based on historical data that is derived from the tracking visibility of millions of mailpieces. Over a given period of time, you can gather enough statistical data to know that a mailpiece that is delivered from destination scan A to delivery point B generally takes approximately one day, two days, three days, etc. So this predictability, combined with the knowledge that a mailpiece has reached its destination scan, now gives you the opportunity to precisely time multi-channel messaging.

Accountability: Everybody is chasing ROI these days, whether it be the overall effectiveness of a direct mail campaign, the value of investment in a technology, or anything else they’ve invested in with the intent to save and/or make money. Accountability is essential in calculating ROI. Sometimes mailpieces are delayed or go missing somewhere along the mailing chain before they reach their destination scan, which can have a major impact on campaign success. You can see this happen through visibility, and can infer that there might be a problem when your predictions are not met. When mail goes missing or major delays occur, you can use the findings based on visibility and predictability to hold the USPS^® accountable for it. In fact, one of our customers has done just that and received a significant postage variance as a result.

Visibility, predictability, and accountability: essential elements to effective multi-channel marketing campaigns. Statistics show that people respond better to multiple approaches, from different types of media. In order to effectively pull this off, you need a foundation for the campaign, and direct mail – an intimate, tactile, highly personable type of communication – is the perfect center around which all other channels can revolve. By gaining insight into the progress of your mailpieces and making predictions based on astute observations, you can reach a level of campaign success that truly shows the value of direct mail.

Chris Lien

President