A well-maintained mailing list is the foundation of a successful direct mail campaign. Good data hygiene ensures your mail is correct and deliverable. By keeping your mailing list clean and properly sorted, you can take advantage of postage discounts and maximize the effectiveness of your campaign.
Why Data Hygiene Matters
Cleaning your mailing list means identifying and correcting bad addresses, standardizing address formats, and removing duplicate or outdated records. Without these steps, you risk undeliverable mail, wasted printing costs, and lower response rates.
Key Data Processing Steps
All data processing should always include the following before being used in a campaign:
- National Change of Address (NCOA): Updates your list with any recent address changes filed with the USPS, ensuring your mail reaches recipients at their current location.
- Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS): Standardizes addresses and adds precise delivery information, including ZIP+4 codes, to improve accuracy and deliverability.
- Deduping: This is the removal of duplicate entries from a list to ensure each contact is only included once. This helps improve mailing list quality, reduces wasted resources, saves postage, and prevents recipients from receiving the same mail multiple times.
These are just a few of the ways a mailing list can be updated and enhanced.
The Power of Presorting
Once the data is scrubbed and your list is clean, presorting takes it a step further by organizing mail by ZIP Code before it reaches the post office. This allows the USPS to process and deliver mail more efficiently, which translates into lower postage rates for you. By grouping pieces headed to the same destination, you benefit from commercial postage discounts and faster delivery times.
Better Data, Better Results
Investing in mailing list hygiene and presorting doesn’t just save money, it improves your overall campaign performance. Fewer returned mail pieces mean more successful deliveries, higher response rates, and a better return on investment.
If you want to get the most out of your direct mail campaigns, Allied has the expertise and tools to help you optimize your mailing lists for maximum accuracy and savings. Contact us to learn more!
