Margie Dana

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Whipping Your Mailing List into Shape - Tips from a Direct Mail Queen

Your company's doing a direct mail campaign - and you're in charge of the database. Since postage costs can be considerable, you should make sure your database is in good shape for your mail house.

To find out what this entails, I spoke with Christine Erna, Executive Vice President for Fulfillment, Print, & Mailing Solutions in North Andover, MA. Christine was a popular speaker at our 1st annual print buyers conference last year – and she will return again this November! I call her the Direct Mail Queen; she’s that knowledgeable.

Christine, are there common mistakes that customers make when getting their mailing lists ready for a big DM campaign?

Yes. It’s very common for people to send more information in their database files than we need – for example, phone & fax numbers, email addresses, things that do not pertain to a mailing address. On the flip side – many times there are a lot of data fields that are empty – individuals’ names, company names, street addresses, or city/state/zip information. Ideally, these “bad” records should be removed, and erroneous information should not be included.

Let's say some of the data is in all caps, and other entries are upper/lowercase. Should the customer spend time fixing this - or is this something a mail house can take care of more efficiently?

Let your mail house do it. Software nowadays is so advanced that it can easily take care of issues like this.

What if some of the addresses in your database use the 2-letter postal state abbreviation, like MA, but other entries have the state name spelled out – like Massachusetts. Should the customer clean this up before sending it to her mail house?

Again, because of the sophistication of various software programs, features like search/replace can easily fix these. It can also be done through the software address standardization function.

I would suggest that people learn the appropriate process for building databases with the US Postal Services “Standardized Address” parameters. The US Postal Service has a free publication on Address Standardization available for PDF download at: http://pe.usps.gov/cpim/ftp/pubs/Pub28/pub28.pdf.

You probably hear this all the time: should customers always use zip + 4 in a database? Does it really make a difference?

US Postal Services “Standardized Address” parameters recommend that customers always use and include the +4 code if available. This assists in the barcoding and sorting of the mail at the US Postal Service.

What other simple clean-up steps do you recommend customers take with their database before sending it to the mail house, to keep costs down or save time?

When managing multiple files that will ultimately be merged/purged (duplicates removed), it’s extremely important that the column headings and fields be consistent. If they aren’t, the quality of the merge/purge is compromised. As I mentioned in my earlier comment about extraneous information in the database that won’t be used for a mailing, I recommend that you clean out the database fields that don’t include mailing address information.

Are there any rules of thumb for what steps are best done by a mail house?

Experience, equipment, software and capabilities are the basic “Rules of Thumb” to follow when considering mailing professionals. Presorting for eligible postage discounts has to be done by US Postal Service PAVE (Presort Accuracy Validation and Evaluation) certified software, as well as NCOA (National Change of Address) service. NCOA services must be submitted to a licensed vendor. Mail houses have this software and relationships with licensed vendors to accomplish this. Experience in processing data allows us the efficiencies for coding files, utilizing suppression files (do not mail to), and tweaking the data for optimum use and best postage discounts.

Do you have any other advice?

Data is the most critical component to a mailing. You can have the best marketing plan or cool design for your mail piece, but if it is not delivered with your message, or because of poor address quality, it is of no value.

Thanks to Christine Erna of Fulfillment, Print, & Mailing Solutions for her smart tips on direct mail databases. You can reach Christine at (978) 620-2800.

©2007 Margie Dana. All rights reserved. You're free to forward this email to friends and colleagues: please do! However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author.

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Print Buyers Speak

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Triumphs of Printing! A Night to Remember

Boston Print Buyers Dinner Program
Tuesday, June 26th, 6 - 8:30 pm, Boston, MA

Everyone is invited to this special event - buyers, marketers, designers, printers, paper pros, etc. Come share your own story about a print project that overcame challenges. Buyers - invite your printer-partner to attend. Printers - invite a customer to share your story!

Frank Romano will be there - come say hello to the industry's leading expert!

Networking, cocktails, dinner, story telling - and prizes.

To register, visit our event page.

Jobs Posted

COMMERCIAL PRINT COORDINATOR is needed at John Hancock in Boston, MA.

Technical Editor (Production-oriented) at Analog Devices in Norwood, MA.

Read details on our Job Bank page.

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