Declaring mail use type

Overview

Identifying your mail use type helps Lob populate the right mail settings and postage options to ensure your mail is produced and delivered in an optimal way. Lob requires that you identify—or tag—your mail with one of the following use type options:

• Marketing mail: Any mailers that are sent for marketing, advertising, and promotional purposes

• Operational mail: All other mail, typically transactional or functional in nature, such as invoices, adverse action notices, statements, and other confidential mail that include sensitive PII/PHI data

It will be your full responsibility to accurately represent the purpose of mail that is created and sent. Lob will be unable to make any determination of which use type should be applied to your mail being sent, or for making retroactive changes to your API calls.

How to declare your mail use type

You should declare your mail’s use type at the appropriate level based on your organization's usage (at the account, campaign, or mailpiece level).

1. Setting use type for an account (default)

If the majority of your mailpieces have a singular use type, then it is best to configure a default use type at the account level. This can be changed by an account administrator in the Use Type section in the Accounts Tab in the dashboard settings. An account-level setting will be applied to any mailpiece created without a use_type at the individual mailpiece or campaign level.

While an account-level designation is not required, the failure to declare a mail use type at any level means that in the absence of a default value, your organization will be prevented from sending any mail until a use type is declared.

To set an account-level default, go to your Dashboard Settings > Accounts tab:

2. Setting use types for each mailpiece

If you or your team sends mailpieces with varying use types (including different teams that utilize the same Lob account for different purposes), then it is best to declare your use types at the single mailpiece level or at the campaign level.

If you have built a native Lob integration to trigger individual mailpieces, you will want to configure a use type at the individual mailpiece level. A mailpiece designation will override your account-level use type, regardless of whether the default selection is made.

In the Dashboard

When sending a single mailpiece through the dashboard, use type will be a required selection for every mailpiece format (letters, postcards, self-mailers, or checks).

Example: Use Type selection when creating a new postcard in the Dashboard

In the API

When sending a POST request to the below endpoints, pass in a use_type value of either marketing or operational. Note that the account default will be overridden by passing in a use_type for each mailpiece. If no account default is set and no single endpoint-level use_type is passed in the request, the mailpiece cannot be created and will fail with a 422 error.

api.lob.com/v1/letters api.lob.com/v1/postcards api.lob.com/v1/self_mailers api.lob.com/v1/checks

Example: POST /v1/postcards request with use_type included

{
    "description": "demo",
    "to": "adr_42bb83a3a643c43f",
    "from": "adr_42bb83a3a643c43d",
    "front": "tmpl_a1234dddg",
    "back": "tmpl_a1234dddg",
    "size": "6x9",
    "mail_type": "usps_first_class",
    "use_type": "operational",
    "send_date": "2022-05-01T00:00:00.000Z"
} 

3. Setting use types for each campaign

The Campaigns product is designed to help send large volumes of mail quickly, either through the dashboard or Campaigns API.

If you have built a native Lob integration to send mail campaigns, you will want to configure a use type at the campaign level. A campaign-level designation will override your account-level mail use type, regardless of whether the default selection is made.

In the Dashboard

When sending a Campaign on the dashboard, selecting a campaign use type is a required step during the “Configure campaign” page in Step 1. You will be able to select one of two options: Marketing or Operational. Any selection will be applied to all mailpieces within the same campaign.

Example:

In the API

When using the Campaigns API, add the use_type field to the POST /v1/campaigns request. If the use_type is not added, the campaign will use the account default use_type. If no account default is set and no campaign-level use_type is passed in the request, the campaign cannot be created and will fail with a 422 error.

Example: POST /v1/campaigns request with use_type included

{
    "name": "Summer Campaign",
    "description": "Acquisition for new customers",
    "schedule_type": "immediate",
    "cancel_window_campaign_minutes": 40,
    "use_type": "marketing"
}

Error reference

If no account default is set and no campaign or mailpiece use_type field is passed in your API requests, your calls will fail with a 422 error.

Read more about error codes under the "Error Codes - Advanced" section of our API Reference.

To ensure your mail sends do not fail in the future, we strongly recommend you set an account default as a fall-back option as soon as possible