Direct Mail and Mailing Lists
To ensure timely delivery and qualify for bulk mail discounts, your mailing labels must meet United States Postal Service guidelines. We can ensure that your addresses are correct, your data is in the proper format (including presorts), and even print your mailing labels for you.
Getting Your List Ready for Mailing
USPS Preparation…
We offer several database/list-cleaning options from full renovation to simple USPS CASS, ACS and PAVE certified coding.
Is your list full of duplicates? Are there entries with information in the wrong fields? Was it created in an obsolete format?
We can optimize your list, removing exact and “near” duplicates (i.e., same person and address, written differently) as well as merge (combine) several lists together into one, removing duplicate records in the process.
If you need us to, we can also convert it to or from any number of file formats for you.
More information on Mailing List Preparation
Nixies
A colloquial term for a mailing piece that is misaddressed or illegibly addressed and therefore undeliverable. Although Nixies are returned to First Class mailers by the U.S. Postal Service, unless you use either the manual or automated services of the USPS Address Change Service (ACS), your Standard A (formerly known as 3rd Class) mail will be tossed into a Postal dumpster (it’s also called undeliverable-as-addressed mail).
The addresses on nixies are often retained in a “Suppression List”, so that they can be removed from the same list or from other mailing lists before they can be mailed again. This is an important function of the merge/purge or de-dupe process and is sometimes called nixie elimination.
Retroversive Mailings
Defined as returning to a former state; and in mailing the unnecessary costs to you go up at an exponential rate when you don’t move your list forward. You can avoid this by correcting address changes and removing Nixies in your list on a regular basis. See how it works below…
Retroversive mailing is when, due to poor list maintenance, you repeatedly mail to the same bad addresses repeatedly. Because the USPS discards those mailing pieces that are either erroneously or incompletely addressed, you are virtually sending your mail to a postal dumpster – again and again.
All lists degrade over time. For example, if your list has 50,000 records and you mail to it every month, it’s likely that there are about 1,000 address changes, and MLNA’s (Moved Left No Addresses) per month. After mailing for 9 months without any address correction strategy as such, you decide to NCOA your file. When your list comes back, the NCOA report shows a total of 9,000 corrections. The apparent conclusion is that out of 450,000 mailing pieces sent, only 9,000 (2%) bad pieces of mail hit the can.
The Hidden Costs of Retroversive Mailing
It can be confusing, but this is how it really works: the first month, you sent out the foreseeable 1,000 pieces (that didn’t go anywhere); the second month you send out a new 1,000 mailing pieces that bore bad addresses, but also the 1,000 pieces that were sent out on month 1. On the second mailing you have mailed a total of 3,000 nixies, on the third, 7,000, on the fourth 15,000 and so forth. By the end of the ninth month, you have sent out a total of 45,000 (10%) mailing pieces – to a postal trashcan.
|
Mo Number |
Normal Turnover per Mo |
Sent |
Resent |
Cumulative Total Sent |
|
Month 1 |
1,000 |
1,000 |
0 |
1,000 |
|
Month 2 |
1,000 |
2,000 |
1,000 |
3,000 |
|
Month 3 |
1,000 |
3,000 |
3,000 |
6,000 |
|
Month 4 |
1,000 |
4,000 |
6,000 |
10,000 |
|
Month 5 |
1,000 |
5,000 |
10,000 |
15,000 |
|
Month 6 |
1,000 |
6,000 |
15,000 |
21,000 |
|
Month 7 |
1,000 |
7,000 |
21,000 |
28,000 |
|
Month 8 |
1,000 |
8,000 |
28,000 |
36,000 |
|
Month 9 |
1,000 |
9,000 |
36,000 |
45,000 |
Let Northwest Database Services help you break this deadly and expensive cycle by collaborating with you to formulate an effective de-duping strategy, using a combination of NCOA and de-duplication processing.
Taking The Confusion Out of Retroversive Mailings
Retroversive mailings can be confusing, so here’s how it really works . . .
Month 1: You send 50,000 mailing pieces every month. 1,000 of these mailing pieces are undeliverable, due to incorrect addresses.
Month 2: You send out the original undeliverable 1,000 mailing pieces (bringing the total recidivate nixies sent to 2,000) plus 1,000 new undeliverable pieces of mail; so, a grand total of 3,000 recidivate nixies have been sent to nowhere at a substantial cost to you.
Month 3: Applying the same formula, you have now sent a total of 6,000 undeliverables pieces.
Month 4: You have now sent 10,000 undeliverable pieces of mail.
Month 5: . . . 15,000 undeliverables re-mailed. . .
Month 6: . . . 21,000 undeliverables re-mailed. . .
Month 7: . . . 28,000 undeliverables re-mailed. . .
Month 8: . . . 36,000 undeliverables re-mailed. . .
Month 9: . . . You are now sending a total of 45,000 pieces per month, for a total of 450,000 pieces for the entire mailing campaign (45,000 pieces for 9 months, and 10% (45,000) of those mailing pieces are undeliverable. If each of your mailing pieces cost $.045 to produce, process and mail, in just 9 months you will have spent $20,250.00 mailing to a trashcan.
Let Northwest Database Services help you break this deadly and expensive cycle by collaborating with you to formulate an effective de-duping strategy, using a combination of NCOA, ACS and de-duplication processing.
We Are Here To Help!
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Sandersville, GA 31082
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