News
 Simple
Steps Often Overlooked in Direct Mail
Even the best marketing strategy will fail if the
simplest steps to keep yourself and vendors from
stumbling over names, formatting data, data
cleansing and delivery are overlooked. Giselle
Abramovich reports on the checklist of issues that
will save you time, money, and embarrassment.
Bill Singleton, manager of analytic services at
Allant Group, Naperville, IL, gave attendees of the
8th Annual MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op ad
interactive marketing conference a checklist of
issues to apply to their own work to avoid
inefficiencies and embarrassment at a session
titled, “The Nuts and Bolts of TB Direct Mail: Ten
Common But Unwritten (and unmentioned) Mistakes.”
Screen files for profanity, was his first tip.
Singleton told the session audience of a situation
in which a sales representative became angry with a
customer and changed his first name to a profane
word. Because the files were not screened, the
customer received a mailing where their first name
was a curse word and was very unhappy.
“Check to see what you are putting into your
mailing,” Singleton chuckled. “This could be really,
really embarrassing, especially these days when a
customer has the power to break you through blogs
and other social media.”
Also its important to look at which address you are
mailing. “Use the right kind of address for your
customers,” he said.
Singleton mentioned a situation where sales reps
were leaving their notes next to customers. These
notes were about specific customers and their
preferences. Somehow, once mailing time came around,
the mailings were printed with the customer’s
preferences in the address line.
Obviously, this was a sum of money that could have
been saved, had the addresses been checked.
“Make sure you need linkage of different account
elements,” Singleton added.
Validate your field formats. Mixed formats from
legacy and new data systems can foil your RFM (recency,
frequency, monetary value) model.
Also, check and see what level you are targeting.
This is where merge/purge comes in.
Merge/purge is the act of combining names, addresses
and related data from various mailing lists to
identify and eliminate duplicate names for a single
mailing, or to create a marketing database.
“Consider who you are mailing to and remember that
any strategy is better than none at all,” Singleton
said.
Plan for old data and for missing data as well.
Checking for consistency also can avoid archiving
errors.
Suppress non-buyers, like the deceased, those in
prison, business complaint addresses, your
competitors, and miscoded consumers.
“By mailing to your competitors you are giving away
your secrets,” Singleton said.
Examine your address elements; don’t just mash
everything in there.
Singleton really insisted that mailers use their
reports. Ask how your files are being requested, how
prospect files are ordered, where duplicate
customers come from, and how to define unique
customers.
“When processing your lists, consider what worked
the last time,” Singleton urged the audience.
---Sources:
Reprinted from DM News July 13, 2007. Contact
Giselle Abramovich at giselle.abramovich@dmnews.com.
Contact Bill Singleton at bsingleton@allantgroup.com.
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