• Gain Financially – write only to those who will respond, achieve the best postage rates on the market due to accuracy and compliance.
• Improve Customer Perception – write to those who want to hear from you with products, services and information that they want to hear about.
• Ensure Your Data Compliance – fulfil data protection obligations.

What is data cleaning?

The Basics of cleaning your mailing list involves bringing names and addresses up to date with correct spelling; cross-referencing with databases of home movers; eliminating duplicates; and removing contacts who are deceased or who have asked not to be sent mail.

Carrying out this data cleaning before you send out your mail campaign can reduce your list size significantly in some cases, which has an advantageous knock-on effect of reduced spend on postage. It also avoids the situation of duplicate mail being sent to the same address, mail being sent to people who are no longer at the listed address, or who have made it clear that they don’t want to hear from you.

You may also wish to categorise and refine mailing lists by demographics such as age or gender and geographical location.

Why is having clean mailing data so important?

Working from an un-clean or out of date mailing list is potentially expensive and wasteful – and you also run the risk of alienating or annoying potential customers. This is especially true in the case of deceased persons, in which case it can be very distressing for families to receive advertising targeted at a loved one who has passed away.

Every day an average of 1368* people die in the UK, every quarter over 4,000 businesses dissolve, **18,000 people move house, 240 businesses relocate. With these statistics it’s easy to see why databases can easily become out of date. An experienced mailing company can help you update your records by running your data against national files and matching it up for registered changes.

It doesn’t take much research to find a number of case studies of direct mail gone wrong due to using unclean lists.

For example from a UK company: A veterinarian practice sent out a flyer to a customer who hadn’t been in for a while, personalised with the pet’s name and the phrase, “We can’t wait to see you again!” This might have been an effective direct marketing, had the pet not died two months previously.

Receiving unwanted direct mail can be annoying at best and distressing in the worst-case scenario. If you are working from a mail list that has not been cleaned, you are running the risk of wasting time, money and the campaign being completely ineffective. Plus your data protection obligations are not being met and you will not be getting the best postal discount. Advertising Mail works on the premise of clean data; It really is worth making the effort to clean up your lists before embarking on a direct mail campaign to make the most of your budget.

For more information call us on 0208 946 1234

*Office for National Statistics, 499,331 Deaths Registered in England and Wales 2012. **Experian 2013.