Over 40 million Americans will move this year. And of those, a startling 35% will not complete a change of address form with the post office.
That means if you rely on National Change of Address (NCOA) data to update your mailing list, you are going to miss more than a third of your bad addresses every year.
Over time that will add up to a considerable portion of the money you are spending on direct mail going to bad addresses in your database.
Even with good data, the fact is most mailers end up mailing to a bad address at least four times before the problem is discovered.
One approach smart marketers have taken to keep their lists up-to-date is to put a statement on their mailing pieces that simply asks the recipient to update them if the address information has changed. Of course this only works a percentage of the time.
There are a number of ways to make sure that your lists are current.
If you are mailing third class, try using the post office's Return Service Requested service. With this program, you simply print "Return Service Requested" on your third class mailing envelope. Then the post office will return your undelivered pieces.
All undelivered pieces come back to you with either a new address or the reason for nondelivery attached. You then pay the First Class Mail single-piece rate (determined by weight) for the pieces returned. (Check with your post office for complete details on how this program works.)
Spring Clean Your List by Springing for First Class
Depending on the size of your mailing and the number of anticipated returns, it may actually be more cost effective to simply mail one First Class mailing per year.
When you mail First Class, all undeliverable mail is returned to you at no additional charge.
Either way you can then use the address information on the returned pieces to remove the expired addresses from your list.
But expect to be busy the first time you do it. Even using NCOA a typical list will have 5%–10% bad names—so mailing to 100,000 names could produce close to 10,000 pieces of returned mail.
Though this method will not be appropriate for everyone, an inexpensive way to get the list-cleaning effect of a First Class mailing is to use an offer-driven 4x6 postcard mailing.
For ideas on what might work best for your situation, call me at 310-212-5727 or email me at craig@cdmginc.com.