Maintaining Your List to Maximize Success
Quality, efficient database management should be a high priority for businesses. Driving this is the need to reduce mailing costs while improving the relevancy of its mailings. Every step taken to maintain a clean list makes a business more efficient and more effective.
So what do you know about your list? Do you keep it current? Clean it? If you don't you're sending unnecessary mail and incurring unnecessary postage and production costs. And, if you send a large percentage of mail pieces to bad addresses or uninterested recipients your ROI will suffer.
According to the US Post Office, U.S. businesses send billions of pieces of mail that are undeliverable as addressed (UAA). By taking simple, ongoing steps to maintain a clean, up-to-date list your business can reduce the amount of UAA mail. At the same time, you'll reduce your environmental impact by decreasing the paper, ink, and energy used when producing these pieces. There are many resources available to help hone your lists.
- ZIP CODE correction ensures that mail is delivered to its proper recipient
- Address standardization eliminates address errors
- National Change of Address (NCOA) corrects addresses
- Address Element Correction (AEC and AEC III) corrects problem addresses through enhanced ZIP+4 processing
- US Postal Service Address Change Service corrects an address after mailing
- DMA Mail Preferences Service (MPA) subscription lists consumers who want to receive less unrequested advertising mail.
Eliminating bad addresses isn't the only thing you can do to hone your list. Even your customers can help.
- Merge and purge mailing lists often to remove invalid names and addresses
- Provide frequent, clear opportunities for customers to opt-in and opt-out
- Maintain a Do Not Mail list to prevent unwanted communications
- Allow customers to specify their preferred method of contact
- Keep a detailed suppression file that classifies customers by the products they're interested in and the products they're not interested in
- Use incentives to encourage customers to proactively notify you of incorrect mailing information or duplicate mailings
- Target and mail efficiently, using segmentation and modeling to select recipients
- Personalize your message to increase relevance and rimprove response
- Test a sample of a list before mass mailing to ascertain its accuracy
Every step you take to maintain a clean, relevant list helps your business' efficiency, effectiveness, and bottom line.
To receive a pdf copy of our White Paper "Maintaining Your List to Maximize Success is not a Fairytale" send email request to: Compu-Mail White Paper | List Maintenance
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Five Ways to Sustain Business in Difficult Economic Times
- Narrow Focus. Winners in a down economy focus on select areas where they can develop an edge over the competition.
- Prevent across the board cutbacks. Uniformly cutting costs will lead to damaging the areas customers value most.
- Invest. Tough financial times present bargains, in assets and talent. The top
three areas to invest in: marketing R&D, and customer perceived
quality.
- Set clear goals. Top companies have an agenda (retaining customers, prospecting, etc.) that every employee works towards.
- Encourage questions and ideas. The best ideas often come from empowering employees to chip in.
Adapted in part from "Tips for Successful Leaders in Hard Times".
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Why People Buy
When you sell a product it's not only important to know who bought it, but also why they bought. What motivated them to buy your product, what motivated them to buy your product over your competitor's product, and what you can do to motivate them to into a repeat purchase in the future. Almost every significant purchase made involves either saving money or time. If you can include one, or better yet, both of these powerful motivators in your offer, you're success rate will likely increase. When people feel like they are saving money they are more inclined to make a purchase immediately rather than put it off and eventually forget about it. This is especially effective with limited time offers that initiate action within a certain time frame. Demonstrate that your product or service can save them time, make them more efficient, and allow them to get more business done during the day and you have a winner. Integrate these two buying motivators in the same offer and watch your direct marketing campaign soar.
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