If you haven’t noticed, direct mail campaigns are getting smarter thanks to systems allowing mailers to finally track each piece being sent out. Now, direct mail marketers can see why a campaign either worked or fell short of expectations by analyzing this important data.
The USPS’s Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) tracking system is a way to encode mailing information for letters and flats.
Succeeding the older POSTNET barcodes, IMb allows direct marketers and other mailers to identify and receive processing data for outgoing mail and incoming replies to track success and make future improvements.
Specifically, Intelligent Mail barcode tracking provides information like date, time, location and the sort operation of a particular mailpiece being processed by the Postal Service.
There are two types of IMb Tracing services mailers can take advantage of:
1. Destination IMb Tracing gives the mailer processing information on mailpieces successfully scanned to help them determine delivery outcomes. It’s important to note that while scan rates are generally high (90% or higher for letters and 85% or less for flats), the process is not perfect and some mailpieces will go unaccounted for.
2. Origin IMb Tracing is all about what your customers are doing once they get that mail. Specifically, when and where they mailed the replies that come back to you.
How does IMb Tracing work?
In short, it uses special barcodes to collect data from mail as they’re sorted and prepared for delivery by the USPS.
Mailers simply print the Intelligent Mail barcode on the mailpiece and wait to receive and monitor information once the mail is in the system.
After information is collected and made available, software solutions like TrackMyMail can be used to analyze and make sense of the raw data to give the mailer a deeper look into the information to make improvements to future campaigns and other mailing activities.
How can my business actually benefit from using Intelligent Mail barcodes?
While Intelligent Mail seems simple enough, the benefits to businesses struggling to find success with direct mail efforts can be huge, especially for those new to mail tracking.
There are two main advantages that give way to a variety of bottom line benefits for businesses:
- Knowing when your message will actually reach the customer
- Predicting and anticipating responses from customers
How do these translate into business for your company?
Raymond Chin, Vice President of Product management at GrayHair Software Inc., highlighted the central issue at the core of every failed direct marketing campaign and how services like IMb Tracing can be used to fix it:
“Undeliverable mail plagues all mail lists and marketing campaigns, but marketers rarely request the optional services in the Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) to track the deliverability of their mail pieces. This tracking information, coupled with normal marketing methods, is one of the most powerful insights into the effectiveness of direct mail campaigns. Knowing if mail pieces are destroyed, mishandled, returned, forwarded, or undelivered are key metrics available today.”
Let’s explore the three biggest ways these key metrics can be used to actually generate business and drive consumer interest.
1. Track direct mail success rates for future improvement
Whether you’re a retailer, a telecommunications company, a restaurant, or anything in between, measuring the success of a specific direct mail campaign has traditionally been difficult in every industry.
Using Intelligent Mail, you can easily compare how many of your pieces made it into your customers’ mailboxes, when they were delivered, as well as who responded at a certain time and location.
These insights allow you to make the crucial correlation between sales and campaign delivery to determine if your message is compelling customers to take action.
2. Synchronize direct mail with a larger multi-channel marketing campaign
As it becomes increasingly important to reach customers through multiple channels, marketers able to leverage both online and offline channels with highly compelling campaigns often find their efforts paying off in big ways.
According to Forrester, 86% of marketing professionals agree that successfully integrating multiple channels under a single integrated marketing strategy is crucial to their long-term success.
Combining these two channels takes carefully choreographed execution. When timing is key, having a system in place to know exactly how long a message will appear in a customer’s mailbox is critical.
Intelligent Mail barcoding gives mailers the precise processing and delivery data needed to distribute your direct mail pieces at the perfect moment.
3. Use insights to improve customer acquisition and loyalty
While Intelligent Mail is great for tracking outgoing mail, it’s also valuable for gaining insights from what your customers do after they find it in their mailboxes.
Using data from Origin IMb Tracing, you can easily identify who is (and isn’t) responding to your messages while charting those response rates geographically.
Rich response data like this makes it easy to tailor a message to a specific region or demographic depending on whether you’re aiming to generate loyalty among those who know and love you already, or present yourself in an exciting way to those who aren’t familiar with your products or service just yet.
These are just a few bottom-line advantages smart tracking tools like Intelligent Mail give marketers and mailers alike. Here at Suttle-Straus, we offer end-to-end direct mail solutions to take full advantage of smart mailing tools like this to ensure our campaigns have the biggest impact possible on customers.
Want to learn more about using direct mail to resonate with the modern consumer? Download our free infographic: Dynamic Direct Mail: The Neglected Channel That Transforms Brands and Sales.
Take advantage of the USPS Earned Value Promotion allowing you to earn a credit on all scanned business reply mail using IMb tracing. Learn more here.
