Prospecting: Teach an Old Trade New (and Not so New) Tricks

NOT Working: Treating all prospect “singles” the same. Ever-escalating postage costs mean you probably can’t afford to mail the weakest names that survive the dupe-elimination portion of your merge/purge, regardless of how much you paid for them.

Generally, multis are strong enough to be mailed on their own, but smart mailers are finding ways to eliminate the least profitable names from the unique output. You should avoid mailing uncodable/non-ZIP + 4 names or those that can’t be delivery-point-verified. Postage for these names is significantly higher. You can cull the best singles via modeling. And further downstream, use singles from your weaker lists when they contribute to carrier route qualification.