If you are sending your donation direct mail to addresses that are no longer valid then you are needlessly decreasing your donor response rate since those packages will never be delivered.  Moreover, since Canada Post recycles undeliverable Admail you have no idea how many pieces went undelivered.  Depending on the size and frequency of your mailings, these four (4) simple techniques will help you clean your mailing list and save you the costs of production and postage for invalid addresses.

Mailing List Cleanup #1 – Run your Donor List against NCOA (National Change of Address).

NCOA is a national registry maintained by the post office and it includes everyone who has registered a change of address.  Direct mail list cleaning can be done by most mail houses and data list providers in a couple days.  NCOA should probably be run on your list every 12 – 18 months.  However, you will get a report back of what was changed, and that will help you gauge how frequently you should clean your mailing list with the NCOA.

Mailing List Cleanup #2 – De-dupe your File.

De-duping is a process to remove duplicate addresses from your database.  Depending on your relationship with your donors, you may want to communicate to each family member individually, each family as a group, or each household.   Obviously, the more general the parameters of the de-dupe the more addresses that will get removed, ultimately cutting costs of your direct mail campaign.

Mailing List Cleanup #3 – Use a Kill File.

A kill file is a list file that is run against your main mailing list.  Every time there is a match, the corresponding records are removed or “killed”.  Kill files can be used if there have been changes or updates between the time you exported your data for your mailing house and the time the mailing house actually processes the data.  Kill files can also be used if you have a list of people that are disqualified from the offer you are about to send out – while you do not want to remove them from your database entirely you may want them removed from a particular mailing.

Mailing List Cleanup #4 – Return Postage Service.

Another way to find out who is and is not really receiving your mail is to have undeliverable mail returned.  There are two (2) services that guarantee your direct mail is returned – Lettermail (First Class) and Return Postage Guaranteed Addressed Admail (or RPG Admail).  With RPG Admail you pay per piece only for returned mail, so you should consider running NCOA first in order to avoid an excessive cost for the returns. Once you get your returns make sure you have someone update your database so that next time these records stop skewing your results.

Do you have a simple way to keep your data clean and generate goood karma?

Please share and post a comment.