No matter how great the creative or how strong the offer, if your mailpiece never sees the inside of a mailbox, you have zero chance of having an effective campaign.
UAA mail, or 'Undeliverable As Addressed' cost marketers over $1.3 billion back in 2016. That's a whopping 6+ billion pieces of mail. And marketers aren't the only ones sending mail that will never be delivered. Our own government agencies are guilty too. In Fiscal 2018, the IRS mailed over 14 million pieces of UAA mail.
Here's the other alarming fact for marketers using USPS Marketing Mail (aka Standard Class): you might not even know how much mail is being wasted because in many cases, Standard Class mail is discarded by the post office if it isn't deliverable.
If you are not performing regular database hygiene on your customer file as well as every prospect list you mail, you may be throwing away as much as ten percent of your mail. Now, keep in mind that some waste is considered industry-standard. Afterall, data processing is not perfect and neither are lists. But, it shouldn't be more than two percent. So, what are the basic hygiene steps that you should take when you're mailing?
1. Your list should be CASS certified with undeliverable addresses and duplicates removed.
2. Every address should be delivery point validated, aka DPV.
3. Remove vacancies. If there's no one living in the house, the USPS isn't going to deliver the mail.
4. If you're obtaining a prospect list, make sure you're asking things like "When was this list last updated?" and "Do you run NCOA (National Change of Address) and remove deceased records?"
5. If you're mailing an existing customer file, ask yourself when was the last time you ran NCOA on your file? How often are you running your file to identified deceased records? Your customers will move away. If you wait too long to run this type of hygiene on your file, you may never know where they went.
You work hard to build that customer file and you need to be able to use it to create loyalty and lifetime value. Your customer list is just as dynamic as your creative or your offer - more so in fact. Keep it cleaned up and you'll enjoy a better return on your marketing investment. Afterall, it doesn't matter how great the offer is if your mailpiece is destined for a USPS dumpster.
TMM Direct provides hygiene service - and it doesn't cost as much as you think. Contact us today to talk about how we can help you clean up your customer file. Email: info@tmmdirect.com.