Maintaining a clean and updated mailing list is an ongoing challenge, especially with over 40 million Americans changing their address every year. To put that number in context, if you had the entire country on your mailing list, around 13% of your list would go out-of-date each year. The actual figure for many organizations could in fact be much higher.

If that doesn’t make list maintenance hard enough, U.S. Postal Service regulations requires that mailers sending Commercial (discount) First-Class Mail® and Standard Mail® can demonstrate they have updated their mailing list using an approved solution within 95 days prior to the date of mailing. All of this puts enormous pressure on organizations to keep their mailing lists clean and up-to-date.

Fortunately, list hygiene is an exercise that comes with tangible rewards. First, a cleaner mailing list will improve in-home delivery rates and the timeliness of delivery. It can also save your organization money by reducing processing costs; from cutting down mail that never makes it to its recipient (Undeliverable As Addressed – UAA) to reducing the cost of creating the mailing itself (for pieces that don’t get delivered). And, when more of your mail reaches its intended recipient, your response rates go up and the number of unsatisfied customers drops.

Many organizations already have some form of address correction process in place, so the real question becomes how to make that process more efficient and effective? For organizations looking to save more on their mailing processes, pre-mailing solutions can dramatically improve list hygiene and cost savings. Proactive address-correction solutions save businesses money by reducing wasted printed materials, resent materials and UAA mail. Organizations also realize better response rates and less waste than ever before.

If your organization has been looking for better ways to keep your mailing list clean – and save money in the process – it may be time explore these pro-active (NCOA Link) solutions. As an added benefit, many of the latest scrubbing tools offer pre-sorting capabilities and generate the USPS documentation required to help you receive automation rate discounts. It’s yet another way that cleaning your list pays!

WHAT’S NEXT:

For more information on the benefits of list hygiene and the available solutions, read our full article, Cleaner Lists. Higher Response. More Savings.

Find out how mailing software solutions from Pitney Bowes can help streamline your mail handling processes.