How to Use USPS Informed Delivery in Your Direct Mail Campaigns

Preview

What Is Informed Delivery and Why Should Mailers Care?

USPS Informed Delivery is a free consumer program that sends daily email notifications showing grayscale scans of incoming letter-sized mail. Over 72.9 million people have signed up — roughly a third of all U.S. households. For them, it's a convenience feature. For mailers, it's an opportunity to add a full-color ride-along image and a clickable URL that appears alongside the grayscale scan in the Daily Digest email. If you're already running a direct mail campaign, Informed Delivery gives you a second impression at no additional postage cost. For a deeper overview of the program itself, see our Informed Delivery review.

The ride-along opportunity is straightforward: when you submit a qualifying mailing through the USPS Mailer Campaign Portal, you upload a color image (200×200px minimum) and a target URL. When Informed Delivery scans your physical mail piece and matches it to a subscriber's address, that subscriber sees your color image alongside the grayscale scan — plus a clickable button to your URL. First-Class Mail, Marketing Mail, and Nonprofit Marketing Mail all qualify. EDDM Retail does not qualify for ride-along campaigns because EDDM pieces don't carry Intelligent Mail barcodes.

Real Campaign Results

The full guide includes a detailed ROI framework: how to set up UTM tracking for ride-along URLs, how to use unique landing pages per campaign, and how to run a three-group test design (mail only, mail + ride-along, control) to measure the true incremental lift. There's no additional USPS fee for Informed Delivery campaigns — your only cost is the time to set up the campaign in the portal and the creative work for the ride-along image.