Postal Service Requires
INTELLIGENT MAIL BARCODES
Say so long to those customary spaced out short and tall ticks marching across your piece of mail. Instead, start looking for the new Intelligent Mail package barcode (IMB) if you haven’t seen it already. It looks much like barcodes found on retail packaging; tall bars of uniform height and varying thickness. What’s the difference between the new IMB and the old barcode? The IMB embeds additional information for routing, sorting, tracking, data delivery, and other intelligence capabilities.
Switching over to the new IMB will soon become a requirement from the Postal service on all bulk mailings and business reply mail. 
From the Postal Service’s standpoint, the new IMB will provide mailpiece-level intelligence that will enable the Postal Service to improve handling, provide enhanced tracking visibility, and increase efficiency. For consumers, the new barcode adds additional services for near-time tracking of mail delivery and other value added services.
Under current guidelines, by January 2012 the IMB will be required on all domestic packages and all Express Mail and Priority Mail pieces, regardless of shape, including flat-rate packaging. At that point, in order to be eligible for discounts on letter-size bulk mail and/or to receive Delivery Confirmation service, the mail house you are working with must be compliant and use the new IMB protocol. (Allegra Marketing Print Mail of Okemos switched to this new protocol in the 3rd quarter of 2010.)
Want to learn more about the Intelligent Mail package barcode? You can find the Federal Register document on the Postal Explorer website at pe.usps.com under Federal Register Notice.
Contact us at Allegra Okemos at (517) 333-0713 for information on mailings or marketing in general--we'd love to hear from you!