The 2024 USPS Promotions Calendar has been published and there are a few changes to note from previous years. The biggest change for 2024 is the Emerging & Advanced Technology Promotion. Here is a link to the Promotions and Incentive Programs on Postal Pro and let's get into the details.
Tactile, Sensory and Interactive Mail Piece Engagement:
Registration for this promotion opens on December 15th, 2023, and runs through July 31st, 2024. The promotion runs from February 1st through July 31st. To qualify for this promotion a mail piece needs to engage though innovative use of unique paper stocks, substrates, inks, interactive elements and finishing techniques. The promotion is for both Marketing Mail letters and Flats as well as First-Class Mail letters, cards, and flats. If you're mailing out a First-Class postcard, don't forget you can go up to 6” H x 9” W card and receive the First-Class Postcard Rate. You must mail the cards out as an automated barcoded mailing. The discount for this promotion is 5%. This is the last year that gloss coated stock will qualify for this promotion. The Guidebook and Resources for the TSI promotion is available at this link.
Personalized Color Transpromo:
As in the case with the Tactile promotion, registration opens on December 15th, 2023, and runs through July 31st, 2024. The promotion runs from February 1st through July 31st. The Personalized Color Transpromo promotion enhances the value of First-Class Mail by encouraging mailers of bills and statements to incorporate color marketing messages to improve connection to and response from customers. By making mail pieces more fun and impactful a mailer will get a 3% discount for personalized full color and consumer messaging. This year mailers will receive an additional 1% discount by including reply mail (BRM/CRM) to collect customer responses. The Guidebook and Resources for this promo is available here.
Emerging and Advanced Technology:
The Emerging and Advanced Technology promotion has exciting changes, as the customer can pick the six-month period you would like to use the promotion. The six months must run consecutively. This added flexibility allows mail owners to use the promotion when it works best for their business. The six consecutive months can run anytime between January 1st – December 31st, 2024. Tracking for this promotion is done by a mailers Customer Registration ID (CRID). This promotion encourages mailers to add emerging technologies such as Enhanced Augmented Reality (AR), VR/MR, NFC Video in Print, or Multichannel Mail Integration with Video Assistants. This promotion is eligible for both Marketing Mail Letters and Flats as well as First-Class Mail Letters, Cards, and Flats. This promotion provides a postage discount of 3% if you use Enhanced Augmented Reality, Basic Integration with Voice Assistant or Mobile Shopping. You are eligible for a 4% discount if you use Advanced Integration with Voice Assistant, Video in Print Technology, Near Field Communication, Mixed Reality or Virtual Reality. The Guidebook and Resources is available here.
Reply Mail IMbA:
This is the second year of this promotion, and it begins on July 1st and runs through the remainder of 2024. The registration period is from May 15th through December 31st. This promotion is for mailers to build engagement by adopting an Intelligent Mail Barcode Accounting Qualified Business Reply Mail (QBRM) or High Volume QBRM. This allows customers to improve visibility of reply mail while delivering easier payment methods and faster delivery speeds. This promotion is for First Class mail only, as it is for Business Reply Mail.
A 3% discount is available if a static barcode is used with your QBRM, and a 6% discount if you enroll in IMbA and use a serialized barcode on your QBRM.
This promotion has a little more set up involved than most of the other promotions. This is especially true if you are not currently set-up to run Qualified Business Reply Mail. A QBRM account will need to be set up and test envelopes will need to be sent in as part of the approval process. All the details can be found in the USPS Guidebook for this promotion.
Informed Delivery:
Informed Delivery promotion has a registration period from June 15th thru December 31st and the promotion runs from August 1st thru December 31st. The USPS is willing to give mailers who use an Informed Delivery omni-channel marketing campaign a 4% discount on postage. You must create an Informed Delivery campaign through the Portal, on the Business Customer Gateway, or submit your elements through eDoc submission and develop a campaign that meets best practice requirements. An Informed Delivery campaign may seem like a daunting task, but with the help of an experienced mail service provider like Suttle-Straus, the process can be a smooth one. Automation compatible Marketing Mail letters and flats and automated First-Class Mail letters, cards, and flats all qualify for the 4% postage discount. The eDoc postage statement submitter also receives a 0.5% discount once the postage statement has finalized. Review the Guidebook and Resources for Informed Delivery.
Retargeting Promotion:
The Retargeting promotion sign up period starts on July 15th and the promotion runs from September 1st through November 30th. This promotion is for First Class mail only. Marketing mail is excluded from this promotion. Retargeting is the process where you match either the visitors IP address to a website or an app to a customer's physical address. This is triggered automatically by a digital interaction, and a retargeted direct mail piece is produced. This mailer is printed with details from the visitor's interaction on the website. The targeted message is then printed and mailed in a timely manner to the customers home address. Unique offers will normally be a part of the retargeting mail piece, offering the customer extra incentives to complete a purchase.
Eligible mail pieces are First Class postcards. They can be a 4.25" x 6" Single Piece First Class Postcard, A 4.25" x 6" Pre-Sort First Class Postcard or a 6" x 9" Presorted First Class Postcard. Please note that there is no 6" x 9" Single Piece Postcard rate. You must be able to presort the 6" x 9" postcards to receive the postcard rate. Suttle-Straus offers our Connected Mail program and retargeting is part of that program. Contact your Suttle-Straus Sales representative for more details or check out the Guidebook for this Retargeting Promotion.
By using USPS promotions, you can ease the pain of the Postal Rate Increase that is taking effect on January 21st, 2024.
I'm hosting a free webinar going over each of these promotions in depth on January 31st, I hope you can join me. Register here.
Happy Mailing,
Rob Hanks
