Technology Tips

Get Out the Soap and Sponge - It's Time to "Scrub" Your Direct Mail List 

Has your organization ever come up with a great direct mail offer, only to see half of the mailing returned as "undeliverable?"

If so, you might want to consider a technique called "scrubbing" your mailing database before you do your next promotional mailing. List scrubbing will save your marketing department (and mail room) headaches, and exponentially increase the effectiveness of your communications.

List scrubbing is a procedure that merges and purges your existing address list, weeding out duplicate and incomplete contact information, comprehensively updating your files to keep them fresh and accurate.

Unfortunately, list scrubbing is hard to do in-house, notes Mary Jo Preston, a media planner/buyer with Boelter + Lincoln Marketing Communications.

"You need to do this through a direct mail list company" says Preston. "They have access to programs such as the NCOA (National Change of Address) software that cross check your list with the U.S. Postal Services system. There is a fee, but you get the most accurate information possible - with changed addresses, forwarding addresses and more."

Unfortunately for would-be do-it-yourselfers, the NCOA program is only available to licensed direct mail companies that buy it through the Post Office; non-registered organizations cannot buy it directly. In most cases, direct mail list companies scrub monthly, so you can be confident that your mailing is going out to the most updated and accurate list possible.

Many businesses these days are skipping the "snail mail" and opting to e-mail information and promotional offers to their customers and prospective customers. E-lists can be a little trickier for scrubbing, but the same general rules of thumb apply.

"I see e-lists as part of a long-term strategy," says Lisa Huebner, media director at Boelter + Lincoln. "In this case, you need to create your own database and use online marketing to expand it. The key is to make it worthwhile for customers to sign up to get more information on your business. As your database expands, it can be segmented to market specific products or services. "

Huebner doesn't recommend buying "cold" e-mail lists like you would direct mail lists because of the limitations of the Can-Spam Act and other highly sensitive anti-spam policies. "If a customer has not specifically agreed to receive your email," she notes, "there is a very good chance it will bounce back to you or get caught in their spam filter."

A good way to start building an e-mail database is by using e-mail advertising to interest-specific opt-in lists maintained by newspaper Web sites such as jsonline.com or chicagotribune.com. These "ad-mails" are sent to customers who have registered with the sites and specifically asked to get offers and information from advertisers on specific topics, such as travel. Because these ad-mails are coming from trusted sources (the newspapers), they historically get high open and click-through rates. Best of all, the recipients who respond back to you can now legally become part of your e-mailing database.

For more information on list scrubbing and other topics related to direct marketing, contact Direct Marketing Association at www.the-dma.org.