Marketers can digitize physical direct mail campaigns by utilizing USPS Informed Delivery®. This service provides a digital extension to traditional mail, allowing recipients to view and interact with full-color, clickable promotional images in their email before the physical piece ever arrives at their door.
Direct mail holds one major advantage that digital channels simply cannot replicate: it puts your message physically into your customer’s hands. But what if your campaign could start driving digital traffic before the mail carrier even arrives?
What Is USPS Enhanced Informed Delivery?
Every morning, consumers enrolled in the USPS Informed Delivery program receive a Daily Digest email containing scanned previews of the mail scheduled to arrive in their mailbox that day.
For a standard piece of mail, this preview is just a basic grayscale image of the outside of the envelope. However, when you launch a campaign using Enhanced Informed Delivery, you transform that basic scan into a highly engaging, branded touchpoint.
The Power of the Daily Digest Email
Instead of a simple grayscale scan, Enhanced Informed Delivery displays a full-color promotional image paired with a clickable call-to-action (CTA).
That link can send your audience directly to:
Your primary website or e-commerce store
A dedicated campaign landing page
An exclusive online offer or coupon code
An appointment scheduling tool
A specific product or service portal
By utilizing this tool, your audience doesn’t have to wait to check their physical mailbox to engage with your brand. Your campaign gives them an immediate reason to take action online.
Why Add a Digital Extension to Your Direct Mail?
Think of your physical mail piece as the anchor of your marketing campaign. Informed Delivery simply adds a secondary, digital path to that exact same message.
A recipient might see your promotional image in their Daily Digest email in the morning, click through to browse your website, and then receive the physical mail piece later that afternoon. Alternatively, they might see the digital preview, remember the offer, and be primed to engage when the physical piece finally arrives.
Either way, you are creating multiple opportunities to capture attention and drive conversions. You aren’t replacing traditional mail with digital marketing; you are bridging the two for maximum impact.
The Massive Audience Behind Informed Delivery
Informed Delivery is not a niche service—it is a massive marketing channel.
More than 74.8 million customers have signed up for the service, making it one of the largest and most engaged digital audiences operated by the Postal Service. Even more impressive, the USPS reports that Daily Digest emails consistently achieve open rates above 60%, which is exponentially higher than traditional commercial email marketing benchmarks.
The audience is highly active, too. Recent interactive Informed Delivery campaigns generated more than 10.6 billion impressions and nearly 18.7 million clicks. That translates to massive additional visibility for campaigns that are already paid to be in the home.
Using Digital Previews to A/B Test Your Campaigns
One of the most overlooked advantages of adding a digital component to direct mail is the ability to track, measure, and A/B test different creative approaches in real-time.
For example, organizations like the Pittsburgh Pirates and Bono’s Pit Bar-B-Q have utilized Informed Delivery to test different messaging and imagery on their audiences. By pairing physical mail with interactive digital previews, both organizations successfully increased their campaign response rates by more than 30% compared to traditional direct mail alone.
This proves that Informed Delivery is more than just a display ad—it is a powerful analytics tool that helps you learn exactly what resonates with your target market.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Standard Informed Delivery only shows the recipient a grayscale scan of the exterior envelope. Enhanced Informed Delivery replaces that scan with a full-color promotional image and a clickable link that drives traffic to your website.
No. Informed Delivery is a digital extension of a physical direct mail campaign. It acts as an omnichannel touchpoint, allowing users to interact with your offer online before they check their physical mailbox.
The USPS reports that Daily Digest emails achieve average open rates exceeding 60%, making it a highly reliable channel for guaranteeing impressions on your target audience.
Upgrade Your Next Direct Mail Campaign
Informed Delivery® gives your marketing campaign a second opportunity to reach your audience, drive immediate digital engagement, and generate measurable results before the envelope even arrives. By combining the tangible impact of physical mail with a clickable digital experience, you ensure every marketing dollar works harder.
Are you ready to add a layer of digital engagement to your print strategy?
Learn More About Our Integrated Direct Mail Marketing Programs and let our experts set up your next interactive campaign.
