{"id":1484,"date":"2014-10-01T05:54:54","date_gmt":"2014-10-01T11:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=1484"},"modified":"2014-09-25T19:22:14","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T01:22:14","slug":"lob-postcard-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1484","title":{"rendered":"Lob Postcard Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago, I wrote <a href=\"\/wordpress\/archives\/1468\">a Zapier app to integrate with the Lob postcard API<\/a>. I actually spent the 94 cents to get a postcard delivered to me (I paid 24 cents too much, as Lob has now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lob.com\/services\/postcards\">dropped their price<\/a>). The text of the postcard doesn&#8217;t really matter, but it was an idea I had to offer a SaaS that would verify someone lived where they said they lived, using postal mail. Here are the front and back of the postcard (address is blacked out).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1701\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1701\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1701 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_20140717_195130816_HDR-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Lob Postcard Sample, address side\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" srcset=\"http:\/\/edit.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_20140717_195130816_HDR-1024x576.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/edit.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_20140717_195130816_HDR-300x168.jpg 300w, http:\/\/edit.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/IMG_20140717_195130816_HDR.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1701\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lob sample postcard, address side<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1702\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1702\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1702 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/IMG_20140717_195146540-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Lob Postcard Sample, front\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" srcset=\"http:\/\/edit.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/IMG_20140717_195146540-1024x576.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/edit.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/IMG_20140717_195146540-300x168.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1702\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lob sample postcard, front (from PDF)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Here is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/document.pdf\">PDF that Lob generated<\/a> from both a PDF file I generated for the front (the QR code was created using <a href=\"http:\/\/goqr.me\/\">this site<\/a>) and a text message for the back.<\/p>\n<p>A few observations about the postcard.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The card is matte and feels solid.<\/li>\n<li>The QR code is smudged, but still works.<\/li>\n<li>The text message on the back appears a bit closer to the edge on the actual postcard than it does on the PDF image.<\/li>\n<li>The front of the postcard appears exactly as it was on the PDF.<\/li>\n<li>It took about 5 business days (sorry, working from memory) for delivery.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, if I were going to use Lob for production, I would send a few more test mailings and make sure that the smudge was a one off and not a systemic issue. I would definitely generate PDFs for both the front and back sides&#8211;the control you have is worth the hassle. Luckily, there are many ways to generate a PDF nowadays (including, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.codinghorror.com\/the-principle-of-least-power\/\">per Atwood&#8217;s Law<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/parall.ax\/products\/jspdf\">javascript<\/a>). I also would not use it for time sensitive notifications. To be fair, any postal mail has this limitation. For such notifications, services like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twilio.com\/\">Twilio<\/a> or email are better fits.<\/p>\n<p>In the months since I discovered Lob, I&#8217;ve been looking for a standalone business case. However, business needs that are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>high value enough to spend significant per notification money and<\/li>\n<li>slow enough to make sending mail a viable alternative to texting or emailing and<\/li>\n<li>split apart from a larger service (like dentist appointment scheduling)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>seem pretty few and far between. You can see a short discussion <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=8154418\">I kicked off on hackernews<\/a>.\u00a0 However, <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2014\/09\/08\/lob-series-a\/\">they&#8217;ve raised plenty of money<\/a>, so they don&#8217;t appear to be going anywhere soon.<\/p>\n<p>But the non-standalone business cases for direct postcard mail are numerous (just look in your mailbox).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago, I wrote a Zapier app to integrate with the Lob postcard API. I actually spent the 94 cents to get a postcard delivered to me (I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,35,2,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apis","category-business","category-technology-and-society","category-useful-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}