There was a time when mail was sorted manually and the pigeon was the courier. Now it sounds like a part of a fairy tale. Nowadays advancement in technology has brought about a sea change in the entire system. The USPS is an acronym for United States Postal Service.

USPS is a government owned agency situated in the United States and is responsible for delivery of mail. USPS is one of the oldest government organizations in the USA and holds a kind of monopoly on many aspects of delivering mail. Through the USPS, citizens can send mail and parcels to almost any part of the world at reasonable prices.

The Intelligent Mail Barcode, popularly known as IMB is a new system introduced by USPS. It is a next generation of barcode technology that can be used for sorting and tracking letters and flats. It combines the capabilities of the Planet Code barcode and the POSTNET barcode into one unique form of barcode.

Many software companies design USPS software or USPS shipping software. They create and provide software solutions for direct mail, marketing, document design and data quality. Let us discuss some of its products they offer.

MaxPresort is one of the most comprehensive and powerful product for United States Postal Service bulk mailings. It is ideally suited for business which have direct marketing campaigns, or else who serve others who mail. This software helps in taking advantage of the huge postage discounts that are offered by the USPS. They can presort mail of different types like letters, NFMs, flats and parcels. This sorting is done in USPS classes –Periodicals, First-Class Mail, Package Services and Standard Mail. Apart from presorting mail, the software also has an optimization routine so that you can further maximize your discounts.

MaxPresort also supports the Intelligent Mail Barcodes. It can be used with the Basic as well as the Full Service Options and includes Intelligent Mail Container Label and the Intelligent Mail Tray Label.

Another product is the IMB Manager. This technology allows users to create an Intelligent Mail barcode for files that are generated by any type of presort or Mail.dat product. It also allows users to manage their exclusive Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers either within a single Mailer ID or else across multiple mails for the same Mailer ID. This is how it works. First, it creates all three kinds of Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers. Then it creates a database which can track the 45-day expiration dates for these Serial Numbers. The interface is intuitive and easy to use.

MaxOG is another product that uses functionality from MaxPrint, a great document creation and printing software. It can produce a wide array of documents and labels with the help of pictures, text, ovals, tables, boxes, lines and fill patterns in various font, color or orientation. By using MaxOG you will be able to create letters as well as name-and-address labels using Intelligent Mail Tray, Intelligent Mail barcodes, Container Labels and also Inkjet files.

Thus you can effectively use these products for direct mail and marketing or document designing.