Keeping Your Mailing List Current
Working to stretch your advertising dollars? Trimming costs and improving efficiency? Take a look at your annual direct mail budget, especially the line item for postage--often the highest number on the bill. If you aren't keeping your mailing lists current, or if you're buying lists that are outdated, a lot of those postage dollars end up in the trash, not to mention your printing dollars.
That shouldn't come as any surprise; approximately 40 million Americans pack up and move every year. The post office forwards First Class mail for twelve months, whether it travels across the country or to a more desirable neighborhood in town. Beyond that (12-18 months), first class pieces are returned to sender with the new address or marked "undeliverable". Pre-sort standard mail (new name for bulk mail) if undeliverable as addressed is not forwarded or returned to the sender, it is disposed of by the Postal Service (thrown away). The exception is when marked with "or current resident" or having an address correction endorsement.
Those folks may very well be interested in your product or service, but mail addressed to a previous resident makes it appear as though, well, you haven't done your research; perhaps you aren't trying to reach them.
That's where the National Change of Address comes in. Change of address records, including the resident or business name, old address and new address, are entered and sent to a master database. Then a provider, like BlueGrass Mailing, matches your lists against the NCOA file, automatically updating the list, returning it; and it's ready to go. The cost is a fraction of the postage dollars you're likely to be wasting and like most check-ups should be done at least once every year. The change of address records go back as far as four years.