Plavidian Mailing Intelligence™

Mailing Intelligence: Better Data, Smarter Postal Decisions, Verified Production and Delivery Visibility

Plavidian Mailing Intelligence™ is how we use data at each step of the direct mail we produce in Vista, California: a clean address list before anything prints, a postage and entry plan before the job is quoted, camera verification while it runs, and piece-level visibility after the mail enters USPS. Camera verification is an add-on you choose for a job, and the list and postage planning tools are free to try before you talk to anyone.

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Four questions, answered in order

Is the list right? CASS, NCOALink, deduplication, geocoding
What will it cost and when will it land? Mailing Blueprint, entry planning, in-home dates
Was every piece produced correctly? camera verification (an add-on), reconciled production report
Where is it now? piece-level USPS tracking and delivery maps

One connected workflow

Data to proof, one provider

Most mailings cross three or four vendors. Every handoff is a place where a list changes, a piece goes missing, or nobody can say what actually happened. Plavidian runs these steps in one workflow, with one set of records.

DataCASS, dedupe, householding, NCOA when needed, presort
PrintVariable production, matched inserting
VerifyCamera add-on reads every piece, diverts exceptions
MailFull-Service preparation, eInduction, entry
TrackUSPS scans piece by piece
ReportPostage statement and USPS tracking report; Assurance Report on verified and EDDM mailings

One provider. One connected workflow.

Since 2008Producing print and mail in Vista, California
USPS Full-ServiceCertified Mail Service Provider
Piece-level verificationCamera-read add-on, not spot-checked
AAPC memberAmerican Association of Political Consultants
Vista ChamberChamber of Commerce member
PCC memberUSPS Postal Customer Council

1. Better data

Getting the address list right

Plavidian runs CASS standardization, NCOALink move update and deduplication on addressed production lists as applicable, geocodes them, and shows you the result on a map before a single piece prints. The free Address List Cleanup tool standardizes and deduplicates a list in your browser, and the mailing list and audience targeting service builds the list when you do not have one: voter files, donor files, saturation routes and consumer selects.

2. Smarter postal decisions

Postage planning with Mailing Blueprint

Mailing Blueprint™ reads your list and returns the presort makeup, the postage priced from USPS Notice 123 with a +/- 5% planning range, pallet and workshare discounts, a drop-shipment plan priced by weight with transit days, in-home dates, the Density Optimizer, a distribution map and a downloadable PDF report. It is free and takes minutes. The Drop Shipment Plan and In-Home Date Estimator turn that into an entry and calendar plan, and nationwide mailing logistics carry it to the right USPS facilities. Blueprint and those two tools are part of Plavidian Workbench™.

A finished Mailing Blueprint in a Plavidian account: estimated postage with the planning range, density and presort tiers, list counts, the drop-shipment plan and the report downloads — A real Blueprint run (customer view): 105,426 flats, postage by density tier, the drop plan with its freight, and the standardized list and map ready to download. Customer names blurred.

Mail Distribution Map for a 105,426-piece Fresno mailing: pieces per block group over city boundaries — The Mail Distribution Map: pieces per block group, with ZIP, census place and legislative district overlays

Density Optimizer: carrier routes just short of the High Density threshold, the pieces needed, and the postage both ways — Density Optimizer: which routes are a few pieces short, and what filling them saves

Blueprint geographic distribution: in-area and out-of-area pieces and postage by county — In-area / out-of-area by county, with the in-area-only list one click away

3. Verified production

Add camera verification and every piece is read and matched

Plavidian Sentry™ camera verification, an add-on for letter-size mail, reads the Intelligent Mail barcode on every finished piece at production speed, matches it to the record it was built from and diverts anything that does not agree. That is piece-level verified production: every piece is checked, not a sample. The run is reconciled afterwards in a Plavidian Assurance™ report: records in, suppressed, produced, verified, exceptions, mailed. The production standards every job is held to are published on this site.

Plavidian Sentry camera verification live dashboard: every piece read on the addressing line and matched to its record — Camera verification on a live job: each piece read, matched, and any miss diverted before it reaches a tray.

4. Visibility after entry

Where the mail is, piece by piece

Plavidian Insight™ follows USPS Informed Visibility scans for every piece - pallet and tray arrivals, processing, out-for-delivery and delivered - and plots them on a delivery map with day-by-day curves and exception lists, so a campaign knows what landed where before the phones ring. An Informed Delivery campaign adds the USPS digital preview on top of the physical piece.

Plavidian Insight delivery map: every mailpiece plotted at its street address with delivered, pending and not-yet-scanned status — Plavidian Insight on a live mailing: one dot per piece, colored by USPS scan status, over city and district boundaries.

The platform

One account ties it together

Everything above lives in your Plavidian account: design print-ready mail in the online designer (Studio), check and fix files in Artwork Prepress, run the free tools, submit the job, approve proofs, watch production and follow delivery - with the same identifiers from list to letter carrier.

Mailing Blueprint one-pager (PDF) Plavidian Studio one-pager (PDF) Artwork Prepress one-pager (PDF)

Plavidian Studio open in a Plavidian account: the canvas with bleed, cut and safe guides, the product preset and the toolbox — Plavidian Studio

Artwork Prepress result: the file preview with bleed and cut lines, located issues, and the Make it print-ready fixes — Artwork Prepress

Plavidian Insight tracking page for a delivered mailing: expected, delivered, out for delivery and in-the-mailstream counts above the delivery map — Plavidian Insight on a job

Where it matters most

Mailings that cannot afford a guess

Political mail printing and campaign mail: Fixed election calendars, multiple versions, voter-file lists and Tag 57 handling - see the political mail case studies.
Nonprofit fundraising and donor mail: Where the list is the asset and every undeliverable piece is a lost gift.
Public and legal notice mailing: Where you may need to show what was mailed and when, and the reconciled report on a camera-verified mailing is that record.
Commercial printing and direct mail: Postcards, letters, self-mailers and catalogs where postage is the largest line on the invoice.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

What is mailing intelligence?

Using data at every step of a mailing to make better decisions and to prove what happened: cleaning and understanding the address list before it prints, planning postage and entry before the job is quoted, reading every finished piece by camera during production on jobs that add camera verification, and following the pieces through USPS scans after they are mailed. Plavidian Mailing Intelligence™ is the name for that whole chain.

Is it an add-on I have to buy?

The planning tools in Plavidian Workbench are free to use before you ever place an order. Camera verification is an add-on you can put on a job for letter-size mail; mailings that carry it close with a signed Plavidian Assurance™ Report.

Do I need to be a customer to use the tools?

No. Plavidian Workbench runs in your browser at no charge. Some tools, such as the In-Home Date Estimator, work without signing in; Mailing Blueprint, Address List Cleanup and the Drop Shipment Plan need a free Plavidian account, which also saves your results and carries them into a job.

How is this different from ordinary mail tracking?

Ordinary tracking tells you where a piece went after you handed it over. Mailing intelligence starts before that: a clean list, the right presort and entry plan and, when camera verification is added, every piece verified against its record before it leaves the floor. Tracking comes last, and each step answers a different question.

Which mailings benefit most?

Political and campaign mail on a fixed election calendar, nonprofit appeals where the list is the asset, public and legal notices where the deliverable is the evidence, and any mailing with multiple versions or matched inserts where one wrong piece is expensive.

Postal terms on this page: Intelligent Mail barcode · Full-Service · CASS · NCOALink · Seamless Acceptance

Go deeper

Piece-level mail tracking with Plavidian Insight · Political mail camera verification · Free postage planning with Blueprint · Mailing lists and audience targeting · Mail intelligence articles · Postal Encyclopedia

Print. Mail. Know More.

Bring us the list, or let us build one. Plavidian plans the postage, shows you the delivery and, as an add-on, verifies every piece by camera - and you can start with the free tools today.

Get a Custom Quote Talk to a Print & Mail Specialist

Data, addresses and postal optimization

Planning a list before it mails: Mailing Blueprint, address checks, list processing, postage optimization, maps and district data.

Mail tracking and verified production

How mail is followed from the Intelligent Mail barcode printed on the piece to the USPS scans that show it reached delivery.