Informed Delivery.
Your mail piece, in their inbox, before the mailbox.
USPS Informed Delivery is the free consumer service that sends every registered recipient a daily digest email previewing the mail USPS will deliver that day. More than 60 million U.S. addresses are enrolled. Mailers can submit full-color ride-along creative through the USPS Mailer Campaign Portal — DirectMail.io handles the submission automatically — and the preview email opens at roughly 63.9 percent and clicks at roughly 26.8 percent. The same mail piece becomes two coordinated touches at no extra channel cost.
Five steps. Set up once. Runs per campaign.
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Recipient registers for Informed Delivery with USPS
USPS Informed Delivery is a free consumer service. Roughly 60+ million U.S. addresses are signed up. Once registered, the recipient gets a daily digest email from USPS with a grayscale preview of every mail piece scheduled to deliver to their address that day.
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USPS scans the front of every mail piece during sortation
A grayscale image of the envelope or postcard front is captured automatically as part of standard USPS sortation. Mailers do not have to opt the piece in — Informed Delivery covers the address, not the piece.
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DirectMail.io submits ride-along creative through the MCP
For mail tied to a campaign, DirectMail.io submits a full-color "ride-along" image plus a clickable URL to the USPS Mailer Campaign Portal (MCP). USPS replaces the grayscale scan in the recipient's preview email with the ride-along creative.
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The preview email lands the morning the mail delivers
USPS sends the digest email at roughly 7:00 AM in the recipient's local time on the day the piece is scheduled to deliver. The recipient sees the brand, the offer, and a clickable CTA — hours before they walk to the mailbox.
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Opens, clicks, and conversions tie back to the campaign
DirectMail.io receives reporting on Informed Delivery opens and clicks per campaign, and ties them back to the recipient record. The mail-piece-as-email becomes a measured channel, not a hopeful one.
Why a USPS-sent email outperforms a brand-sent one.
A commercial marketing email lands in an inbox that has trained the recipient to ignore commercial marketing email. The Informed Delivery preview lands in the same inbox, but it comes from USPS, the recipient opted in to receive it, and the content is a literal preview of physical mail the recipient is actively expecting in the next few hours. Open rates land in the 60-percent range structurally — not because the creative is exceptional, but because the trust framing is.
The bigger structural win is that the inbox impression and the mailbox impression are coordinated by the postal service itself. The recipient checks email at 7 AM, sees the branded preview, registers the offer cognitively, and physically retrieves the mail when it arrives that afternoon. The two touches reinforce each other in a way that two separate channels never can — because no third-party integration could ever deliver the same morning-before-mailbox sequencing USPS hands you for free.
And the cost is the production of the ride-along creative — nothing more. USPS does not charge for the ride-along program. The mail piece pays for itself; the inbox impression rides along.
Where Informed Delivery earns its keep.
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Acquisition campaigns at high volume
Every piece in the drop produces an inbox impression in addition to the mailbox impression. The same mail piece becomes two coordinated touches at no extra channel cost.
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Brand campaigns where impression value matters
A 60 percent-plus open-rate inbox impression on the morning of mail delivery is one of the cheapest brand impressions available in any channel. The CPM is effectively a fraction of the mail-piece cost.
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Variable-data ride-along creative
The ride-along image can be variable, generated per recipient — name, offer, account-tier, geographic landmark. Personalized inbox preview that matches a personalized mail piece.
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Catalog and high-value piece preview
For catalogs and high-cost pieces, the Informed Delivery preview gives the recipient a reason to retrieve the mail before it gets recycled. Conversion windows on physical pieces extend.
Questions teams ask before deploying.
Short answers. For implementation specifics on your stack — variable ride-along creative, MCP submission cadence, post-campaign reporting — book a demo.
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What is USPS Informed Delivery?
USPS Informed Delivery is a free consumer service that sends every registered user a daily digest email previewing the mail USPS will deliver to their address that day. The default preview is a grayscale image of the front of each piece. Mailers can submit "ride-along" creative — a full-color image and a clickable URL — that replaces the grayscale scan in the email preview, turning every piece of mail into an inbox impression with a click-through to a landing page or offer.
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How many people receive Informed Delivery emails?
USPS reports more than 60 million U.S. addresses are enrolled in Informed Delivery, with the user base growing year over year. Adoption skews to younger and digitally-engaged households, which makes it especially valuable for mailers targeting recipients who would otherwise ignore physical mail. The reach is built directly into the USPS infrastructure — there is no separate audience to acquire.
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What is a "ride-along" image?
A ride-along is a full-color image and clickable URL the mailer submits to the USPS Mailer Campaign Portal (MCP) that replaces the default grayscale scan in the Informed Delivery preview email. The image can be branded creative, an offer block, a video thumbnail, or a personalized variable-data graphic — whatever drives the click. The URL goes to a landing page (frequently a campaign-specific one), and clicks are reportable per campaign.
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Does the mailer pay extra for Informed Delivery?
No. USPS does not charge a per-piece fee for Informed Delivery ride-along campaigns. The cost of running the campaign is the production of the ride-along creative and the operational lift of submitting it to the MCP — both of which DirectMail.io handles inside the standard campaign workflow at no additional fee. The mail piece itself remains the single line item; Informed Delivery is the bonus channel ride-along.
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What open and click-through rates does Informed Delivery deliver?
USPS publishes engagement data showing Informed Delivery email open rates around 63.9 percent and click-through rates around 26.8 percent — multiples of typical commercial email performance. The reason is structural: the recipient opted in to USPS, the email is from USPS, and the content is a literal preview of mail they are actively expecting. Trust and relevance compound.
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Which mail classes and piece types support Informed Delivery?
Informed Delivery supports First-Class Mail and USPS Marketing Mail letters and flats. Postcards, self-mailers, and folded self-mailers are all eligible. The piece must be the canonical letter or flat dimensions that USPS sortation captures during automation. Specialty pieces — odd shapes or sizes that bypass standard automation — generally do not produce an Informed Delivery preview because the scan never happens.
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How does DirectMail.io handle the MCP submission?
DirectMail.io submits ride-along creative to the USPS Mailer Campaign Portal as part of the campaign workflow. The platform manages the IMb-to-campaign association USPS requires, the creative spec compliance (size, format, file weight), the URL tracking parameters, and the post-campaign reporting pull. From the team's perspective: design the ride-along in the same editor as the mail piece, attach it to the campaign, the MCP submission happens automatically.
Run an Informed Delivery campaign on your next drop.
30-minute demo. We’ll show the ride-along creative submission, the MCP campaign setup, and the open- and click-through reporting tied back to the campaign.