With today’s tight budgets, every marketing dollar counts. You don’t want to be printing, folding, and mailing to inaccurate or nonexistent addresses or to people who haven’t lived at an address in 20 years. Investing in your mailing list can pay off big. But there are other reasons to invest in a clean, up-to-date mailing list, too. Here are five of them.
- Customers expect you to get it right.
Nothing says, “We don’t really care” like a misspelled name or street address. Sure, your mailer might get there (eventually), but at what cost? Keeping your list up to date ensures that your target audience knows that you care enough to get it right.
- 2. It helps with personalization.
Accurate, up-to-date lists are the starting point for creating relevant, personalized communications. Relevance starts with an accurate geographic address. From there, you can build in other variables that improve your targeting efforts, but it all starts with the right city-state-ZIP.
- It provides anchor points for identification.
As you build your database, up-to-date street addresses provide anchor points for accurately identifying each individual in your list. For example, is Jane C. Doe the same as Jane Doe? Are Bob Jones and Robert Jones, Jr. the same person? By cross-referencing by physical address, you can find out.
- It improves targeting.
Once you have accurate addresses for each of the people in your list, you can begin to build more detailed profiles of each. Now you can begin to match records from multiple sources to build composite profiles that help further personalize your communications.
- It saves money.
When you are working with an accurate list, you save money not just by eliminating mail pieces to nowhere. You also save money by not duplicating pieces to the same individual or household. Clean, accurate lists save you money—sometimes, a lot of money.
So invest in your mailing list on a regular basis. It not only helps you create an accurate, up-to-date profile of your customers that saves money, but also, because your email, social, and mobile marketing draw off the same list, it benefits your targeted marketing in other channels, too.