Move Update Validation
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Data Hygiene Critical for Move Update Validation

The USPS will begin using a new Move Update validation process which could impact your budget. It allows them to better identify and penalize mailers who do not practice solid data hygiene. Here’s the breakdown of the changes.

What does this mean for mailers?

As you know, in order to receive postal discounts, the records on your mailing list must have gone through a data hygiene process called NCOA (National Change of Address) no longer than 95 days prior to your mail date. This helps the post office better manage their resources by reducing non-deliverable mail and the time-consuming task of forwarding and/or returning or trashing mail that cannot be delivered to the intended recipient. Move updates must be done for both Marketing Mail (formerly Standard) and First Class mail.

Nothing new there, so what’s changing?

Well, the USPS is changing the validation method used to determine compliance with Move Update –Mailpieces are scanned using Mail Processing Equipment and each mailing’s scores are maintained on a Mailer Scorecard. These results are aggregated across the calendar month and are measured against the established thresholds. Any COA errors exceeding the threshold, which is an error rate of 0.5%, will be assessed a Move Update assessment fee.

What does this mean for you?Move Update Validation

In order to keep your error score down, it’s important to keep up with your data hygiene protocols and process them through the NCOA hygiene in the prescribed time frame.

Managing how your data is in your record will also help. Small things like ensuring your recipient name reads FIRST NAME/LAST NAME vs. LAST NAME/FIRST NAME will greatly decrease your error rate.

If you need assistance with any data hygiene or ensuring your Mailer Scorecard is within USPS thresholds, please reach out to us – we’d be happy to help.

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When It Pays to Stop Mailing Someone

stop-mailing-someoneIt’s always difficult to know when to remove a previous donor from your mailing list.  They obviously cared enough about your mission to donate at least once in the past; surely if you reach them with a beautifully-crafted appeal, they’ll give again, right?  Unfortunately, the answer is “not necessarily”.

There’s a science to determining when it makes financial sense to stop mailing a previous donor.  MMI’s chronic non-responder analysis examines the past 3 years or so of your mailings and the responses you received from each.  By looking at the number of times a donor has been mailed and the responses received from each mailing, we can determine the point at which there is such a low likelihood of response that you’re losing money continuing to mail to someone.

Rather than suppressing these records forever, an interim option is to skip a few mailings and then mail them again.  It’s possible you’ve been mailing this group of previous donors too frequently or they are going through a financially-challenging period; perhaps when they hear from you again after a break, they’ll reengage.

Because the behavior of donors changes, you shouldn’t do a chronic non-responder analysis just once and rely on its findings for years to come.  We recommend redoing your chronic non-responder analysis at least once a year to see if the results have changed.

If you’re intrigued by the idea of using analytical tools to optimize the return on investment of your direct mail campaigns, we’d love to work with you.  Please call John Bell at (310) 372-9010 or let us know the best time to contact you.

 

Want more than a cookie cutter approach?  MMI Direct dives deep into your data
to determine how best to optimize your list and maximize your direct mail ROI.

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Using Modeling to Optimize Your Direct Mail List

One of the most potentially-rewarding merge purge operations you can do is to use modeling to improve the responsiveness of your list.direct mail optimization

Modeling organizations use massive databases containing billions of transactions to estimate the responsiveness of records to various appeals.  While each organization does it slightly differently, modeling organizations typically use market segmentation analysis to estimate the likelihood a name on a list will respond to a particular mailing based upon their age, sex, occupation, education, geographic location and/or other demographic characteristics.  The more advanced modeling organizations can also factor a person’s interests and product use patterns into their analyses.

By comparing the demographics of each record on your direct mail list to the model they create, modeling organizations can identify those individuals they expect will be less likely to respond to your mailing.  Armed with this information, you can simply drop the lower-scoring names from your mailing.  Alternatively, you can replace these names with other names the modeling organization predicts will be more responsive.

Two case studies show the potential impact of merge purge modeling:

  • Increased Acquisition Revenue: A nonprofit organization focused on growing their donor file replaced 90,000 records that were predicted to perform poorly with the highest scoring names available from the modeling database.  Overall response rate increased by 19% and the gross dollar revenues per mail piece increased 21%!
  • Reduced Acquisition Costs: A merge purge optimization analysis showed that records that scored in the bottom three segments of the model for this nonprofit had a response rate 64% below average.  When the mailer dropped the 49,000 records in these segments from its mailing, the number of new donors acquired decreased by only 3% while the overall response rate to the mailing went up 12% and the mailing’s ROI increased by 16%!

As these case studies show, modeling can have a fairly dramatic impact on the ROI of your mailings.  We highly recommend, however, that you test the impact of modeling to ensure that this process pays out for your organization.

Want more than a cookie cutter approach?  MMI Direct dives deep into your data
to determine how best to optimize your list and maximize your direct mail ROI.

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