|
Update Your Mailing - Green marketing
Another culprit in the high cost of undeliverable mail is customers
– they are a constantly moving target. An estimated 43 million
Americans pick up and move every year. That means up to 20 percent
of the people or companies in any database could have a new address
– a fact that presents some pretty big hurdles to maintain quality
mailings lists, and low postage and production costs.
The USPS provides postal discounts for mailers that meet
Move Update standards by keeping their lists up-to-date with
current addresses. Authorized methods to meet Move Update standards
include:
NCOALink® processing, FASTforward®
processing (letter mail only), and Address Change of Service (ACS™).
The USPS maintains a database with approximately 160
million records or 48 months of permanent address changes. It’s called the NCOALink
product. You can submit your mailing list or database records to USPS approved
vendors for NCOALink processing to match your addresses to the
change-of-address records on file with the USPS. Since 1986 when the USPS
introduced the product, NCOALink has saved mailers billions of
dollars that otherwise would have been wasted in paper, postage, and labor
costs.
NCOALink processing your mailing list before
mailing can have a significant impact on the ROI for a
direct mail campaign. Let’s take an example of a 100,000 piece mailing at
bulk rate with a total cost of $0.50 per piece. For this example let’s say that
the mailing will generate a 1.5 percent response rate and $50 in average sales.
Let’s assume that the mail list hasn’t been NCOALink processed in the
last 12 months and there is a “bad” address rate of 5percent. As bulk mail is
rarely forwarded, that means that 5,000 pieces never made it to their
destination. At $0.50 per piece that is a loss of $5,000 right out of the gate.
Now, consider that those prospects never got the opportunity to respond to the
offer. At the 1.5 percent response rate and $50 average gift threshold in this
scenario, that is an additional $3,750 in potential sales lost. So, in this
example, not utilizing NCOALink resulted in an $8,750 mistake. And,
this isn’t an extreme example. Take a look at how outdated a database can get.
Recently, a state Republican Party recently submitted its
voter lists for NCOALink change-of-address processing. Of the 3.9
million voter records processed, about 528,000 records were matched to recent
movers in the USPS file – almost 14 percent of their total mailing would have
been undeliverable-as-addressed without move updating.
Today some type of move update processing is required every
185 days to receive First-Class Mail® automation and presort
discounts. In the USPS’ effort to continue reducing UAA by 50 percent by 2010,
on November 23, 2008 new Move Update standards will take effect – shortening the
minimum processing window for move update processing from 185 to 95 days and
making move updating mandatory for both First-Class and Standard Mail automation
and presort discounts.
In addition to making Move Updating mandatory for both First-Class and Standard
discounts, the USPS has proposed enforcement penalties
for mailings that are not in compliance with the new Move Update standards.
According to Business Mailers Review, the USPS will use the
MERLIN® verification system to check for Move Update compliance. If
there are mail pieces that are deemed noncompliant, then the entire mailing is
noncompliant. As a result, the mailer could be subject to a $0.07 per mail piece
penalty for every mail piece across the mailing, not just on the
undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) pieces.
Such a penalty could be very costly. For instance, if a
mailer delivers a 100,000 piece mailing, and the Postal Service determines that
it is not Move Update compliant, the proposed penalty would be $7,000 for that
noncompliant mailing.
While that figure may raise eyebrows, USPS does plan to
institute a 60 or 90 day grace period, in order to allow everyone an opportunity
to go back and address the issue.
Here are 9 other steps you can implement to green
your mailings – reducing waste, while improving deliverability,
effectiveness and response.
|
