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Postal Regulatory Commission approve USPS Mobile Barcode Promotion
Recently we told you that the USPS were to offer postage discounts to mailers that use QR Codes. Well, the Postal Regulatory Commission have now approved the USPS' Mobile Barcode Promotion, allowing the scheme to go ahead.
During the approval process, the PRC extended the offer to include non-profit mailers, a category missing from the original recommendation.
The USPS Mobile Barcode Promotion was originally designed to increase awareness of QR Codes and other 2D barcodes, helping to show mailers how these up-and-coming assets can increase the value of mail.
We believe the USPS are right to promote mobile barcodes. The US currently tops the charts in the use of QR Codes, with recent analysis from 3GVision showing a 181.1% increase in the scanning of mobile barcodes over the first quarter of 2011. The UK, Netherlands, Spain and Canada make up the rest of the Top 5 countries making good use of mobile barcodes.
Now that the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) have given the promotion the green-light, what are you waiting for?
USPS offers postage discounts to mailers that use QR Codes
You’ve probably heard of QR Codes. These square codes are starting to show up everywhere. Now, the US Postal Service realizes how innovative QR Codes are and is helping to promote them – we think that’s quite innovative for a government agency!
The USPS is even incentivizing the use of QR Codes with a new discount scheme. Read on to find out more…
The strength of these QR codes in mailed documents is that each QR Code is unique. Each one is created based upon the knowledge that you already have about the person that document is going to. 
These QR Codes make your paper documents as interactive as a web page. The user simply points their smart phone at one of these innovative QR codes and any of a wide range of things can happen immediately:
- They can be directed to a personalized web page, customized to that specific person. They may receive targeted offers, product advice or information about a new store opening nearby, for example.
- They can be directed to a customized web page that lets you respond immediately to an offer. Let’s face it; the harder it is to respond to an offer the less successful that offer will be.
- They can be directed to a video describing a product or service.
- Their phone can be directed to call a specific number.
- Almost anything! Let your imagination run wild!
The good news is they don’t have to manually enter in a web site URL or PURL; simply point their smart phone at the block and the phone immediately goes to the intended destination.
The USPS postage discount program for mailers that use QR Codes is effective from July 1st to August 1st, 2011, so you’ll have to act fast. To qualify all you have to do is use QR codes on your mailings and each piece will receive a 3% discount on your First Class Mail pre-sort and Standard Mail commercial letters. Visit the USPS website for more details.
You might be thinking that there is no way you could possibly implement QR Codes to take advantage of these discounts. Thankfully, we created QR Express for just this purpose.
With QR Express, you don’t have to re-write your applications – QR Express takes your existing print ready files and QR Express adds QR Codes onto available white space in those documents; Fast, effective and timely enough to achieve those postage discounts. You can easily participate in this program.
So, what are you waiting for? You can achieve all of the future benefits of communicating to your customers with QR Codes and have the USPS pay for it through this postage discount program.
The beauty of this is that you can effectively let USPS pay for your procurement of QR Express, Operations Express and even Transpromo Express, all of which can offer your organization a range of benefits. Let USPS foot the bill with the QR Code discounts they’re offering!
Who can resist? You need to act fast! Get everything in and running by July 1 for maximum benefits.
