Clean address data is a cornerstone of a successful direct mail campaign. Yet with data often captured from many different sources, address improvement and correction is often essential.
The objective of address improvement is to ensure that the mailing database conforms as much as possible to the Post Office standard BS7666, thereby attracting the maximum possible discounts, and reducing the amount of gone-away returns.
We run the client’s mailing data against the Post Office Address File (PAF). Our aim is to at least ensure a correct post-code and post-town, and improve the overall quality of the addresses to BS7666. The cleansed and correctly formatted mailing data can then be returned to the client at this stage, or further data cleansing services can be applied, at the client’s request.
Why bother with Address Improvement?
Clean, correctly formatted address data brings many benefits to help you increase your ROI on your direct mail campaigns, but is also essential to get the maximum possible benefit out of everything else you do with your data. Here are just a few examples.
Increase the positive response rate of your mailing
First impressions last. It is human nature to notice mistakes. Having spent a considerable amount of time and money on preparing your marketing message, placement of graphics, font colouring etc, it would be unfortunate if the first thing your customer or prospect noticed was that you’d got their address wrong. If the address is correct, the customer will not notice, and their attention will instead by on the message you are trying to convey.
Reduce mailing cost by increasing discounts
Significant savings can be made on postage by using Royal Mail Mailsort or other downstream access services. These discounts depend on the mailing data meeting certain criteria. At the core of these criteria is that the address data must be clean, accurate, and correctly formatted. This can be achieved using our address improvement service.
Further reduce costs by increasing accuracy of other data cleansing services
At Dynamic Data Services, we use cutting edge matching technology to achieve the most accurate suppression and duplicate matching possible. However even the best technology is dependent on the quality of the data it must work with.
By cleaning the address data before applying other data cleansing services, the possible margin for error is reduced, and our matching technology can match with a much greater degree of accuracy.
Better insights into your customer base
How is your business performing nationally? Is one area doing better than another? How many customers do you have within a 3 mile radius of one of your stores?
These are all questions that are easy to answer by analysing your customer address data, but only if that data is accurate. Performing address improvement against PAF helps you to transform your raw mailing data into accurate insights about your customer profile.
To find out how we can improve your mailing data ahead of your next direct mail campaign, why not call us for an informal chat, or try our free data quality audit service today.
