Thursday, June 18, 2015

USPS Unveils Real-Time Mobile Notification of Mail

The U.S. Postal Service announced a new product to further marry digital and direct mail channels by allowing mail recipients to see what mail is arriving in real time on their mobile devices, reports Target Marketing magazine. Called “Real Mail Notification,” the soon-to-come product was unveiled to direct mailers by USPS Postmaster General Megan Brennan at the recent National Postal Forum in Anaheim, Calif. Nine out of 10 consumers participating in a Northern Virginia product pilot are checking daily on their mobile devices to see what’s arriving in their physical mailboxes, she told PostalNews.com, which also reports that a New York City pilot of the RMN program will launch later this year. Brennan touted RMN mobile notification to EcommerceBytes.com in the Target Marketing story: “If you see that you’re receiving a mailpiece from a favorite retailer, you can click on that piece for an additional offer that drives you to open that mail when you get home. Or, you might jump directly to a transaction. In either event, the physical mail piece draws you into the interactive experience.” In her speech to the National Postal Forum, Brennan claimed, “We saw a 10-fold jump in response rate for the pieces we tested.” For more detail and a link to Brennan's speech transcript: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/usps-goes-digital-with-daily-real-mail-notification/

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

E-mail Blasts Daily, But Tuesday Is Most Favored

What's the best day to send e-mail to get a response? Well, if you pick Tuesday, you are joining the e-mail marketing crowd. Using the exclusive e-mail campaign database from Who’s Mailing What (WMW!) for 2013 and 2014, Target Marketing magazine recently assessed e-mail volume by day of the week. The data ranks Tuesday as the most popular day for sending e-mails, with Thursday a close second, for both 2014 and 2013. A review of e-mails received by WMW! also shows that both days dipped slightly in 2014 — Tuesday from 17.8% of weekly e-mails in 2013 to 17.4%, and Thursday from 17.6% in 2013 to 17.1% in 2014 — but both days continued to hold the top overall spots. Those dips may have been due to more weekend sends for the 2014 elections, however. Meanwhile, the third most popular day was Wednesday, which took up 16.7% of weekly e-mails in 2014, up from 16.5% in 2013. Which industry categories are filling up digital mailboxes? Retailers send the most e-mails daily, followed by publishers (magazines and newsletters) and then nonprofits/fundraisers for politics and social action (causes), per WMW! data. Read the article at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/day-week-send-email/