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Correct Your Mailing - Green marketing
Annually, a little under 5 percent of the mailstream, or about 10 billion
mail pieces, are undeliverable-as-addressed. The majority of these mail pieces
are handled as waste, adding ten million tons to the municipal solid waste
stream. By reducing
undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) mail you are not only helping the
environment, you’re also saving money. With the postage and cost increases, bad
addresses have become more costly than ever. As such it is important for
companies to correct and standardize addresses before they enter a database or
CRM to help ensure they don’t waste money later on sending mail to incorrect and
undeliverable addresses.
Thankfully, cleaning up addresses is easy these days. Mail preparation software
is available that will reduce errors due to missing or incorrect directionals,
incorrect street names, missing or incorrect suffixes, incorrect ZIP®
codes, and more. Make sure that the
mailing software you purchase is CASS Certified™. To be CASS Certified,
software must pass an annual USPS test to verify and correct addresses to the
ZIP + 4® level with 98 percent accuracy, among other requirements.
Starting in 2008, CASS™ processing now includes DPV™ and LACSLink™
for a greater level of accuracy. DPV confirms an address has an actual point of
delivery, while LACSLink identifies and updates business and
residential rural route addresses to street-style addresses.
Additionally, mail preparation software will presort and barcode your mailings,
helping you qualify for the lowest postage rates and applicable discounts.
Here’s how one company achieved their goals.
A college magazine publisher mailed out thousands of copies of their monthly
publication but needed to find ways to cut down on their costs. They
investigated and purchased mail preparation software to barcode their mailings
for postal discounts. Not only did the software qualify their mailings for
presort discounts resulting in thousands of dollars a year in savings, it also
verified and corrected incomplete and incorrect addresses which dramatically cut
down on the amount of returned mail.Here are
9 other steps you can implement to green
your mailings – reducing waste, while improving deliverability,
effectiveness and response.
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