As USPS® Informed Visibility® (IV®) becomes real, it is important to consider how this changes mail tracking for you. With the additional insight into the mail stream, along with near real-time availability of the scan events, you can do more for your business.
What is IV exactly? The program consolidates mail tracking into a single system to provide mailers visibility of letters and flats and their aggregates (bundles, handling units, and containers).
What’s different with IV?
With the previous systems, it could take up to two days for the USPS to provide tracking data to the mailer. That was not timely enough to leverage the data in decision-making. Also, the previous systems had limited scan events, thus limiting the insight into where your mail was at any given time.
What can IV do for your business?
Informed Visibility enables a multi-channel experience by providing mailers increased visibility into the mail stream thanks to additional scan events. New scan events include container scans (such as when a drop ship pallet was unloaded off the truck at the USPS destination facility) and logical scan events. Logical scan events include the container scan that can be associated with all the pieces on that pallet via the eDoc and delivery scans based on the carrier passing through a geo-fenced area, which assumes all the pieces for that area have been delivered.
In addition, scan data is now available near real-time with IV, so you can make decisions and trigger subsequent events based on where the mail piece is at the moment… Is it out for delivery the next day? Has it just been delivered to the mail recipient? For example, alert your customers with an email or mobile push notification that an important communication is in their mailbox. Their mail moment will be enhanced, which will help increase your customer conversion rate.
But how is Informed Delivery® related to IV?
There has been confusion, likely due to the similar names for these two USPS programs but also because both are enabled by the scanning capabilities of automation equipment. However, the two programs have different purposes and uses. The concept of Informed Delivery is an opt-in program for mail recipients, where they receive a notice each morning with scans of the letters they will receive that day, and the mailer can choose to enhance that notice with a color image of the piece and a link that could point to a website or some other call to action. I, personally, have found Informed Delivery particularly helpful when on vacation and to make sure my kids don’t lose half the mail on the way from the mailbox to the house. In Informed Delivery, there is no tracking of the mail piece, which is the purpose of IV.
EasyTrack: Empowering you to leverage the improved value of insight.
We at Quadient are excited about what you can do with the changes in mail tracking. Therefore, we are evolving EasyTrack: our mail delivery tracking service. In addition to using the new IV data to enable you to drive decisions in near real-time, we are making numerous enhancements based on customer feedback. For example, EasyTrack will be simplified - from an improved user interface to more cost effective and easy-to-adopt pricing; you will gain more from your product experience. EasyTrack will also help you expand your business; you will have the option to rebrand the user interface as your own to offer as a new value-added service to your customers.
To learn more about the improved value of mail delivery visibility with EasyTrack, contact us at sales@quadient.com or (800) 553-6477.
