It doesn’t have to, says Trish Dominy.

Sometimes, research tells us what we already know. A recent US study by Pitney Bowes Business Insight into mailing address quality concludes that direct marketers are still not paying enough attention to dealing with returned mail. 

The USPS has tried to improve the position with a financial incentive for customers who deal effectively with undeliverable-as-addressed mail – which costs the USPS an estimated $1.6 billion to process. 

The USPS Move Update Standard requires businesses to update their bulk mailing lists for both First Class Mail and Standard Mail within 95 days of the mailing date. As of January this year, companies whose mailings are not compliant are subject to an additional postage of $0.07 per assessed piece.

But the survey findings, consisting of responses from major high-volume mailers, revealed that while companies are concerned with address quality, many are not yet prepared to receive the cost-saving benefits related to USPS rate changes for the proper management of returned mail and address updates.

When mail is returned due to incorrect addressing, 33 per cent said they rely on manually updating the addresses: the most costly method. Only slightly more respondents (39 per cent) say they have an automated process to deal with returned mail. Forty-six per cent of respondents considered handling return mail a manually intensive process and 22 per cent believed that having multiple databases requiring updates is also a key constraint.

So, are things any better in Europe and do list owners whose data is commercially available take this seriously?

As ever, the answer depends on the list source and the best list owners can be differentiated by the generosity of their goneaway policies. 

Understandably, professional compiled list owners are keen to receive goneaways back as these provide triggers for their updating efforts. In the response list world, there is sometimes less urgency, and disputes concerning the shipping costs of returns are common. 

B2B versus consumer

When it comes to B2B mailings, things may be even worse than for consumer campaigns. Another study – this time by myb2bonline.com – looked at data quality concerns in the UK SME sector and found a distinct lack of interest in removing goneaways from databases. Suppression specialist The REaD Group estimates that of the one billion items of direct mail sent to UK businesses every year, around 184 million are sent to companies which have moved or ceased trading.

Industry benchmarks for returns from rented lists (in the UK at least) are three per cent for responder lists and six per cent for compiled data, according to the UK DMA code. There is certainly increasing pressure on list owners to ensure their data meets these targets. Comparisons are inevitably made with email and the common policy of crediting ‘hard bounces’ in full from email lists is having an impact on negotiations around postal goneaways.

Attempting to estimate the total cost of goneaway mail to the world of direct marketing would frazzle anyone’s brain but even at three per cent of the total direct mail budget it must run to billions of dollars. Now that would be interesting research.

Trish Dominy is list manager at RSA Direct – the UK partner within the Lists4Europe network. Email: trish.dominy@rsadirect.com