Tips to Help You Cut Unwanted and Undeliverable Mail
Unwanted and undeliverable mail benefits no one. For marketers, it’s an unnecessary expense; for consumers, it’s an aggravation; and for policymakers, it’s viewed as counter to environmental stewardship.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) recently announced an ambitious public goal to significantly reduce unwanted and undeliverable mail. Its efforts hope to save one million tons of carbon dioxide in five years. Each organization in the direct marketing community can and should support this effort. Listed below are several tips you can implement to help.
To clean your lists of unwanted mail:
1. Run your prospecting lists against the DMA’s Mail Preference Service monthly, or even more frequently, to eliminate names of consumers not receptive to receiving commercial solicitations through the mail.
2. Access and eliminate the names of consumers who have registered on DMAChoice.org to indicate they no longer want to receive your mailings.
3. Provide notices and a convenient way for prospects and customers to let you know that they:
* want to receive fewer mailings;
* are receiving duplicates;
* would rather hear from you in a different way (i.e., electronically);
* wish to hear only about certain subjects; and
* no longer wish to receive your individual mailings.
Then, honor those requests promptly.
4. Maintain a do-not-rent list for customers who enjoy hearing from you but don’t want their names rented to other marketers.
5. Use a good deceased suppression list.
6. Use segmentation and modeling to carefully select names to be mailed.
To clean your lists of undeliverable mail:
1. Make it easy for customers to tell you about incorrect addresses or change of addresses.
2. Use all relevant USPS files or their commercially available equivalent. They include the following:
* ZIP code correction — confirms or corrects ZIP codes;
* address standardization — appropriately arranges name, title, company name and address components according to USPS standards;
* National Change of Address — reflects the most recent 48 months of change of address information and correct address before mailing. Don’t forget the new requirement (goes into effect Nov. 23, 2008) that mailers of Standard mail must run their lists against the USPS’ Move Update file 95 days prior to mailing;
* address element correction;
* delivery sequence file;
* USPS Address Change Service — corrects addresses after a mailing; and
* USPS Vacant Address File — pinpoints vacant locations.
To help cut down on both unwanted and undeliverable mail, consider the following two pointers:
1. hold outside lists to the same list hygiene standards as your housefile; and
2. test a segment of a list before mailing the entire list.
Pat Kachura is senior vice president for corporate responsibility at the DMA. She can be reached at pkachura@the-dma.org. For more information on the direct marketing community’s environmental efforts, go to www.the-dma.org/environment .
