Gary Reblin, USPS vice president for new products and innovation, appeared on Federal News Radio’s Federal Drive to talk up a number of topics, including Informed Delivery.
Informed Delivery, as Reblin laid out to Federal Drive host Tom Temin, is the sending of images the USPS has to take of mail in order to process and send to the right destination, to customers in advance of receipt of mail.
“We package it in an e-mail, or put it in an app, or onto a dashboard,” Reblin said.
Temin asked, skeptically, why anyone would want Informed Delivery. Reblin countered: “A lot of people travel. They want to still be able to monitor what comes in their house. We have a lot of small businesses. They live on the fact of the check…” and needing to know what accounts receivable mail they would be getting on any given day.
Reblin said he personally used informed delivery to see an ad for a new golf club that he ended up purchasing. He said since his wife handled sorting the mail and she was likely to have thrown it out, he would not have seen the ad or taking advantage of it if informed delivery didn’t exist.
The trials in New York and Northern Virginia were going well, according to Reblin.
Other facts and points shared:
- Over 40% of the people viewing informed delivery are, in general, not the people who tend to see the mail
- Over 60% of the people in the program have said they have gone to the mailbox for a specific piece of mail after viewing it through Informed Delivery
- Over 70% of users are opening an email within an hour of when they get it every single day and 92% of the people who get the e-mail service are opening at least 4 times a week
- He said people have been using the service in ways the USPS didn’t even imagine, like sending holiday cards out while at work to people who have sent them cards, via the return address scan on the informed delivery
Reblin said the USPS still anticipated a nationwide rollout in January and full implementation by Spring 2017.
