High-gloss flag and sandpapery wood in USPS’s Irresistible promo piece
The U.S. Postal Service is looking to modify its 2%-off promotions for 2016, with a move toward motivating direct mailers to do A/B testing and to try out advanced printing technologies to increase customer engagement and response.
Among the five promotions the Postal Service submitted yesterday for the approval of the Postal Regulatory Commission is a new stand-alone promotion for Standard Mail. The “Tactile, Sensory, and Interactive Mailpiece” program will encourage mailers to employ advanced print techniques such as rubberized and sandpaper textures or die-cut interactive pieces. These print techniques were demonstrated in the “Irresistible” brochure that the Postal Service distributed at the National Postal Forum in May.
USPS’s “Emerging and Advanced Technology” promotion will add an A/B testing component for limited quantity mailings that would not normally qualify for the 2% discount. Mailers must use standard A/B testing protocols to compare response rates of mailings featuring qualifying technology with those of mailpieces that don’t. Results of their tests must be provided to USPS so that it may give testimony of the data to other marketers.
The “Earned Value Reply Mail,” “Mobile Shopping,” and “Personalized Color” promotions will continue to work largely the way they have in years past. The overlapping promotional programs will run from March through December 2016.
