The first month of 2013 has escaped like a thief in the night and the second one is already 
looking like it will do much the same. I hope your year is off to a great start, I know ours is. In December we initiated conversations with two new organizations and we're delighted to report they have both become new customers. The first is a local manufacturing company that is adopting our online order platform. They love the ease of use and simplicity it offers particularly for their business card needs. We're also exploring equipment labeling applications as well as some unique direct mail needs. The second is a well known university that came to us seeking to upgrade their Annual Alumni Membership Card Program. The longer we worked on this program the larger the scope became. It started out encompassing four giving societies with a single letter and a simple plastic card and grew to eight giving societies, many with two letters and multiple card and key tag combinations. Our sincere "thank you" to both of you for trusting us with your important needs.
This month I struggled more than usual with what to write about. Not that we  have nothing to share, the question becomes more of what to focus on. As you know I like to keep this information very brief, to the point and hopefully relevant to most of our audience. So here's one that touches us all, a brief case study on IMB or Intelligent Mail Barcodes. If you use the mail at all, even just for sending invoices or other important information you'll be pleased to know that IMB can allow you to track individual mail pieces much like you can track a UPS package. You can know with certainty that an individual mail piece was delivered. Why is this important? How many times has someone told you "I didn't receive your invoice"? What about a signed contract you may have sent in the mail, wouldn't it be nice to know it was delivered? Of course it is particularly relevant with direct mail marketing. You can precisely time follow up campaigns, whether they be email, phone calls or additional mailings. How many times has your sales force placed a follow up call only to be told they didn't receive the information? Below is the case study I mentioned.
"Missing Mail" A resort property used monthly loyalty mailings to build repeat business. Customers had become accustomed to receiving these monthly mailings and looked forward to them each month. So when a large number of reward members did not receive their monthly offer the office started to receive complaints. What happened? The logistics company claimed they had no knowledge of any issue. They had sent the signed Standard Mail Drop Shipment Authorizations to the client which typically verifies the receipt of the mail by the USPS. However that wasn't 100% correct in this case. The resort property used TrackMyMail by Pitney Bowes which helped expose the problem. True, much of it had been delivered however after drilling down farther to the SCF report they discovered there were no scans at all in a particular SCF area. With this information in hand they went to the post office to present the signed forms and their information to check it out. After further review it turns out the person who signed the shipment authorization form was not even a postal employee. Someone had used a third party delivery firm whose driver had dropped the pallet of mail at warehouse instead of taking it to the post office.
Without TrackMyMail powered by IMB the resort owner would never have been able to identify the problem. With this technology they were able to uncover the issue and get the incentives delivered to their resort customers and keep their business moving forward. Everyone was happy... well, almost everyone. The guy who left the mail in the warehouse wasn't too thrilled. |
