Each mail piece produced by the business now contains a unique identifier within a barcode. This is scanned at every processing point of the mail network and fed back in real time. Reporting data is then made accessible via the company’s web interface or via API webhooks.
Stannp.com has fully integrated with Royal Mail Mailmark tracking in the UK and USPS Informed Visibility in the US.
Stannp.com said its aim with the service is to make direct mail a simple, accessible channel with transparent tracking and integrated conversion metrics rivalling other digital media.
There is no charge to use the service, which went live around two weeks ago and comes as standard on the free-to-use Stannp.com platform. The only charge is levied per mail piece at the point of dispatch. All software is developed in-house, and no systems are licensed.
Growth director Sam Heaton told Printweek: “We’ve been asking for Royal Mail to release the raw Mailmark data for quite some time. With USPS we get a live feed of every mail piece as it travels through the US network, and Mailmark does the same thing but we could [previously] only access it via the Royal Mail interface.
“But we service 15,000 customers in the UK so we would have to login to the Royal Mail interface for every one of those customers and then grab that data and make it available via our platform – there was no seamless programmatic link between the two.
“So we’ve now got access to the raw data files and we can run a script on that data daily and then push it into our platform and make it all available. So we can now see real-time tracking of mail going through the network.”
He added: “When you look at digital advertising, everything is trackable for how many people have opened an email or clicked on a banner and that’s a calculation of ROI. Having this transparency of data just helps to make [direct mail] a bit more similar to where the main ad budgets are going, which at the moment is to programmatic digital [media].”
The company said its 24-hour production SLA ensures that mail is printed and handed over to the carrier within 24 hours of receiving the order.
Based in Barnstaple, North Devon, Stannp.com employs 35 staff and turns over £5m. It serves clients in a wide range of sectors including e-commerce, theatres, utilities, health, finance and insurance.
The company completes mail production for its UK customers in-house on kit from Xerox, CMC and Buhrs.
Its US customers use a localised version of the Stannp.com platform. The business has a sales office with two staff in Colorado, Denver. Its print production for US customers is contracted to two operations in Colorado, and Buffalo, New York.
