USPS Informed Delivery for Direct Mail Campaigns

USPS Informed Delivery is one of the most underused tools in direct mail services in the Hudson Valley. It adds a digital email preview of your mail piece to subscribers’ inboxes the morning it arrives — creating a dual-channel touchpoint that boosts response rates by 10–15% over mail alone. This guide explains how it works, how to set it up, and what results to expect.

What Is Informed Delivery?

Informed Delivery is a free USPS service that sends subscribers a daily email showing grayscale images of the letter-size mail pieces arriving in their mailbox that day. Over 60 million households have signed up.

For direct mail marketers, this means your mail piece gets two impressions: one in the recipient’s email inbox (morning) and one in their physical mailbox (afternoon). The email arrives before the mail, priming the recipient to look for your piece.

Without any action on your part, Informed Delivery automatically shows a grayscale scan of the front of your mail piece to every subscriber on your mailing list. But the real opportunity is the coordinated campaign — where you replace that grayscale scan with a full-color marketing image and a clickable URL.

Basic vs. Coordinated Campaigns

Feature	Basic (Automatic)	Coordinated Campaign
Cost	Free	Minimal USPS setup fee
Image	Grayscale scan	Full-color custom image
Clickable URL	No	Yes
Call to action	None	Custom CTA button
Tracking data	None	Opens, clicks, impressions
Setup required	None	USPS Business Portal submission

The basic preview happens automatically for all addressed mail. You don’t need to do anything, and there is no cost.

The coordinated campaign is where the value is. You upload a full-color ride-along image (typically a version of your mail piece designed for screen viewing), add a clickable URL that drives to your landing page, and get access to USPS campaign reporting — impressions, opens, and clicks.

How to Set Up a Coordinated Campaign

Coordinated Informed Delivery campaigns are set up through the USPS Business Portal (formerly the Mailer Campaign Portal). The process requires:

1. A USPS Mailer ID — linked to your postal permit
2. A ride-along image — full-color, optimized for email display (recommended 600×200 pixels)
3. A target URL — the landing page recipients will visit when they click
4. Campaign submission — 3–5 business days before mail date

Cornerstone handles the entire setup as part of our full-service direct mail campaigns. We create the ride-along image, submit the campaign through the USPS portal, and coordinate timing so the email preview arrives the same morning as the physical mail piece.

Important: Informed Delivery is only available for addressed mail — it matches mail pieces to subscriber accounts by name and address. Since EDDM uses no addressed list, Informed Delivery is not available for EDDM campaigns. This is one of the key advantages of targeted direct mail over EDDM for campaigns where digital integration matters.

The Numbers

USPS reports these performance metrics across all coordinated Informed Delivery campaigns:

• 63% email open rate — versus ~20% for typical email marketing
• 10–15% higher response rate compared to mail without Informed Delivery
• 60+ million subscriber households nationwide
• Same-day dual touchpoint — email preview in the morning, physical mail in the afternoon

For local Hudson Valley campaigns, the subscriber penetration rate varies by ZIP code. Urban areas (Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh) tend to have higher adoption rates. Rural routes have lower adoption, but the subscribers who do opt in tend to be highly engaged mail recipients.

The cost-per-impression for the Informed Delivery email touchpoint is essentially zero — USPS charges a minimal campaign setup fee, and the email delivery is included in your existing postage. No additional postage, no email platform fees, no list rental.

Designing the Ride-Along Image

The ride-along image is the centerpiece of a coordinated campaign, and most mailers underestimate how much design matters in the email environment. The image displays inside the Informed Delivery email alongside grayscale scans of the recipient’s other mail — your full-color image is competing for attention against flat gray thumbnails of utility bills and credit card offers.

Image specifications:

• Recommended dimensions: 600×200 pixels (horizontal banner format)
• File format: JPEG or PNG
• Maximum file size: 200 KB
• Color mode: RGB (not CMYK — this is screen display, not print)

Design best practices from our campaigns:

• Use your strongest single image or headline — not a miniature reproduction of the entire mail piece
• Include your logo, a short headline, and a clear call to action
• Use high-contrast colors that stand out against the gray email background
• Avoid small text — the image renders at various sizes across email clients and mobile devices
• The clickable URL button appears below your image; design the image to lead the eye toward that button

A common mistake we see from first-time Informed Delivery users: they upload a scaled-down version of the postcard front. The postcard was designed for 6×9 inches at 300 DPI — compressing it to 600×200 pixels makes the text unreadable and the images muddy. Design the ride-along image as a separate creative asset optimized for screen viewing, not a shrunken version of your print piece.

Timing the Campaign Correctly

Informed Delivery emails go out between 4:00 AM and 9:00 AM local time — before most recipients check their physical mailbox. This timing creates the priming effect that drives the response lift: the recipient sees your offer digitally in the morning, then encounters the physical piece in the afternoon. Two impressions in one day from two different channels.

To maximize this effect, the coordinated campaign must be submitted to the USPS portal 3–5 business days before your mail date. USPS needs processing time to match your campaign to the specific mail pieces entering the delivery stream. If the campaign is submitted late, the email may not align with the physical delivery date — and you lose the dual-touchpoint advantage.

For campaigns mailing to multiple ZIP codes across Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange counties, delivery spread is typically 2–3 days. This means the Informed Delivery email and the physical piece may arrive on slightly different days for recipients on the edges of the delivery window. For most local campaigns, the alignment is close enough that recipients experience both touchpoints within the same day or consecutive days.

Cornerstone coordinates the campaign submission timing with our USPS induction schedule to ensure maximum alignment between the digital preview and the physical delivery.

Which Campaign Types Benefit Most

Not every direct mail campaign benefits equally from Informed Delivery. The campaigns where we see the strongest lift share these characteristics:

High-benefit campaigns:

• Time-sensitive offers with expiration dates — the email preview creates urgency before the piece arrives
• Campaigns with a strong online component — the clickable URL drives immediate digital engagement
• Multi-touch campaigns where Informed Delivery adds a third or fourth touchpoint in the sequence
• Nonprofit fundraising appeals — the digital preview primes the donor before the physical ask arrives

Lower-benefit campaigns:

• Restaurant menus and general awareness mailings — the recipient does not need a URL to act
• Campaigns targeting elderly demographics with lower Informed Delivery adoption
• Very small mailings (under 500 pieces) where the campaign setup effort outweighs the incremental lift

In our experience managing Hudson Valley campaigns, the sweet spot is targeted campaigns of 2,000+ pieces with a specific offer and a landing page. At that scale, the Informed Delivery email preview functions as a free email marketing campaign layered on top of your physical mail — with open rates three times higher than standalone email.

Tracking and Reporting

Coordinated Informed Delivery campaigns provide three metrics through the USPS portal:

• Impressions — how many subscriber email inboxes received your ride-along image
• Opens — how many subscribers opened the Informed Delivery email containing your image
• Clicks — how many subscribers clicked the URL associated with your campaign

These metrics tell you how the digital component performed. To measure the full campaign effect — digital + physical — you still need your own tracking: a dedicated phone number, a campaign-specific landing page URL, or a unique offer code printed on the mail piece.

Cornerstone provides a consolidated report combining the USPS Informed Delivery metrics with our campaign tracking data. This gives you a complete picture: how many people saw the digital preview, how many clicked through, and how many responded to the physical piece — so you can calculate the true direct mail response rate for the combined campaign.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Informed Delivery cost extra for direct mail campaigns?

The basic grayscale preview is free and automatic for all addressed mail. The coordinated campaign — which adds a full-color image, clickable URL, and performance tracking — has a minimal USPS setup fee. Cornerstone includes coordinated campaign setup as a standard service for clients running targeted direct mail. Ask about it when you request your estimate.

Is Informed Delivery available for EDDM campaigns?

No. USPS Informed Delivery requires an addressed mailing list to match mail pieces to subscriber accounts. EDDM pieces are addressed to “Local Postal Customer” — no name, no specific address — so Informed Delivery cannot identify the recipient and is not available for EDDM mailings.

What is the average Informed Delivery email open rate?

63% across all USPS coordinated campaigns nationwide. By comparison, the average open rate for commercial email marketing is approximately 20%. This makes Informed Delivery one of the highest-engagement email channels available — and it is bundled with your physical mail campaign at minimal additional cost.

Industries That Benefit Most in the Hudson Valley

Based on our campaign data, these industries see the strongest lift from adding Informed Delivery to their direct mail programs in Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange counties:

Healthcare and dental practices: Patient recall campaigns with Informed Delivery let the recipient click through to an online scheduling page before the physical reminder even arrives. We have seen appointment booking rates increase 18–22% when Informed Delivery is added to healthcare recall mailings.

Real estate agents: Farming campaigns with Informed Delivery drive recipients to property search pages or home valuation tools. The clickable URL converts a passive “just sold” postcard into an interactive lead generation tool.

Nonprofit organizations: Fundraising appeals with Informed Delivery add a “Donate Now” button to the email preview, giving donors an immediate digital pathway to contribute before the physical letter arrives. For year-end appeals competing with holiday mail volume, the morning email preview ensures visibility even if the physical piece is delayed.

Home services companies: Seasonal HVAC, plumbing, and landscaping campaigns benefit from the time-sensitive nature of Informed Delivery. A spring AC tune-up offer that appears in the email at 7 AM and in the mailbox at 2 PM creates same-day urgency that a single-channel approach cannot match.

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