While discounted rates are an important cost advantage for telecoms, mailers must meet the USPS’s stringent requirements to qualify for them. Additionally, they must assure the USPS that its mailing list is certified and up-to-date, generating only minimal and unavoidable undeliverable mail. After all, database marketing techniques like TransPromo and one-to-one direct mail marketing are only effective if the communication reaches the correct target audiences as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Tools for Scrubbing
Many volume mailers may be familiar with the ongoing efforts of the USPS to automate and streamline its operations, with much of this effort based on automating or standardizing as much of the mail handling process as possible. The size of a mailed material is extremely important to the automation process. For a machine to read a piece’s address, the address must be located within a specified area on the envelope. Additionally, all addresses must include certain components and must represent valid delivery points. Anything that falls outside of these basic USPS requirements demands special handling and always leads to delays and added cost.
For example, undeliverable as addressed (UAA) mail must be forwarded, returned to the sender or treated as waste because addresses are incomplete, incorrect or out of date. The USPS has estimated the cost for processing UAA mail at more than $1 billion annually and aims to reduce UAA mail to cut this expense in half by the year 2012. Automated mail returned as “undeliverable” can be charged to the mailer at first-class rates, either per item or, in some cases, for the whole mailing. Mailers who repeatedly fail to comply with the current standards can be fined and this ultimately increases their overall business costs. On the flip side, telecoms and mailers who do practice regular address purging and apply for presort discounts will not only reap the benefits of lowered mailing costs; these companies will also enjoy faster mail delivery and receipt of payments.
To help mailers meet automated discount requirements, the USPS offers software tools to check and often correct mailing lists even before the labels are printed. Drawing on informational resources like municipal 911/Emergency records, which are continuously updated, and working independently as well as with outside vendors, the USPS provides a variety of data and software programs that can help mailers keep their lists up to date. Some of these solutions include:
