Direct Mail & Digital Ad Attribution Software
IndustryMarketing & Advertising
TimelineOctober 2024 – April 2025
Number of Users100+
Technologies.NET Core, C#, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server
Client Summary
Innovative Direct is a Tampa, Florida direct mail marketing agency leading their industry with innovative technology and marketing strategies. Their signature offering pairs each mail drop with matching Google, Facebook, and Instagram ads plus a USPS Informed Delivery preview, so recipients see the same message in their mailbox, their inbox, and their feeds.
Great Team, Excellent Service!
“These guys are great to work with! Their communication is always clear, they’re quick to respond, and they do a great job of understanding our needs and finding solutions that work for our business. Their professionalism and reliability have given us the confidence to invest tens of thousands of dollars in custom complex software development with them. Whether it’s a quick fix or something more involved, they’re always helpful and dependable. It’s nice knowing we have a team we can count on. Highly recommend!”
Matt Blechschmidt, Creative Director, Innovative Direct
3,600,000+
Mailers Tracked Piece by Piece
12M+
Digital Ad Impressions
20M+
USPS Tracking Scans Processed
85,000+
Tracked Website Visits
Our Solution
In 2024, Pell Software partnered with Innovative Direct to replace a white-labeled, licensing-based third-party platform with a direct mail tracking system that our client owns outright. After a three-month software discovery phase, we built it in two major development phases: the core platform launched in April 2025, and a round of enhancements followed in October 2025. Ad creation is managed through Innovative Direct’s own Google and Meta accounts, as well as their client’s accounts, while the platform automates the tracking, syncing, and reporting resulting from their campaigns. Under the hood, it connects to the USPS Informed Delivery and Informed Visibility APIs, the Google Ads API, and the Meta Marketing API. Today, the client-facing dashboard ties every mail drop to its USPS deliveries and digital ad results, with no credits, minimums, or per-mailer fees.
Features
There are several key modules that cover the full campaign lifecycle, from customer and job management to website and delivery tracking, allowing advertisers direct insight into the results of their marketing campaigns. Administrative controls also allow our client’s staff to monitor and configure customer campaigns and report on results via an easy-to-use web-based software interface.
Client Portal & Reporting
The client-facing job portal provides advertisers with highly detailed reporting metrics and charts to track performance. Innovative Direct’s team sets up clients, jobs, campaigns, and mail drops in one place, and the platform handles the tracking setup.
- Delivery heat map shows exactly which geographical areas saw the greatest impact and converted at the highest levels
- Daily mail tracking shows deliveries made per day to allow advertisers to track the daily impact their campaign has
- Site visits and online conversion tracking are shown on a daily basis
- Auto-generated PDF reports that clients can download and share which include drill-downs of performance data by source and date
Job Dashboard
Advertisers and Innovative Direct’s team work together to set up and track campaigns and jobs via the Job Dashboard, allowing for complete control and visibility into their advertisement campaigns.
- CSV mailing list uploads for each drop, thousands of records at a time
- Tracking URLs generated automatically for Google APIs, Facebook & Instagram APIs, and USPS APIs and conversion tracking
- Copy jobs and full audit history, with changelogs, data restoration and historical reporting available to report on changes over time
- Sitewide search across clients, users, jobs, and campaigns
Internal Management Controls
Innovative Direct’s team oversees every client and campaign from one admin dashboard. Live totals and a job-by-job breakdown show what’s running, what’s waiting, and what’s working, without opening each job one at a time.
- Agency-wide totals for ad impressions, engagements, website visitors, and impressions per mailer across all jobs
- Filter jobs by status (pending, active, completed, or cancelled) to see where every campaign stands at a glance
- Every job side by side, comparing mailers sent and delivered, ad impressions, clicks, and website visitors to spot top performers and lagging campaigns
- Role-based access keeps each client in its own jobs, client admins manage their own users, and every admin account requires multi-factor authentication
Google Ads, Meta & USPS Informed Delivery API Integration
Ad results flow in automatically. Integrations with the Google Ads API, USPS Informed Delivery API and the Meta (Facebook) Marketing API pull performance data for every job, eliminating manual work and providing real-time statistics.
- Google Ads certified click tracker: ad clicks route through the agency’s own certified redirect domain, so no code is needed on client websites
- Automated syncs from Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, USPS and direct website tracking millions of mailer deliveries and ad impressions
- Ad campaigns provide full visibility into spend, conversion rates, demographics, budgets and audiences for each campaign and ad group
- Jobs are tracked independently across each platform, utilizing unique tracking IDs to enable the roll-up of data across platforms
Challenges
For more than five years, Innovative Direct ran its digital add-on via a white-labeled, credit-based third-party platform. The add-on was in most of its jobs, but the agency had little say in how it worked or what it cost.
- Unpredictable costs: The vendor raised rates without notice and pushed Innovative Direct to buy credit blocks on the vendor’s schedule. Recurring licensing fees, prepaid per-mailer credits, and campaign minimums made smaller jobs hard to justify.
- No visibility: Ads ran in the vendor’s own ad accounts, so Innovative Direct couldn’t see its ad spend, budgets, or audiences and could not report on key metrics to its clients in real time.
- No control: Useful functionality sat behind paywalls, and the agency had no influence over features or the roadmap.
The add-on was core to their business, but the platform behind it wasn’t theirs.
Results
- $100k+ in annual licensing fees eliminated: Our client has completely eliminated their reliance on third-party software and the high licensing fees by hiring Pell Software to develop this custom software application for their business. No credits, no membership, and no per-mailer charges.
- Full visibility: Ads run in clients’ own Google and Meta accounts, and every ad result sits in one dashboard next to its mail drop.
- Proven at scale: Since the April 2025 launch, the platform has tracked 3.6M+ mailers, processed 20.8M+ USPS tracking scans, and tracked 12.2M+ digital ad impressions.
- Ownership and control: Innovative Direct owns the code, the hosting environment, the ad accounts, and the data. The roadmap is theirs to set with Pell Software’s support for any changes or maintenance requirements.
Technology Utilized
The platform combines a modern .NET stack with direct API integrations to USPS, Google, and Meta.
- .NET 8 and ASP.NET Core MVC: application framework for the admin and client portals
- Entity Framework Core 8: data access layer
- Azure SQL: cloud database for jobs, mail piece tracking, and ad performance data
- TypeScript: front-end interactivity for dashboards, charts, and forms
- USPS Informed Delivery API: creates Informed Delivery campaigns, uploads barcodes, and syncs campaign edits
- USPS Informed Visibility API: delivery tracking scans for every mail piece
- Google Ads API: automated syncs of Google ad metrics for every job
- Meta Marketing API (formerly the Facebook Marketing API): automated syncs of Facebook and Instagram ad metrics
- Google Maps API: interactive delivery heatmap
- Google Maps Geocoding API: converts mailing addresses into map coordinates
- Custom redirect service: Google-certified click tracking and visit attribution by source
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