A clean relevant mailing list is the key to a successful direct mail campaign. Ironically, The Mailworks has one of the WORST databases known to the civilized business world. We preach the importance of good data everyday, yet our list is a hot mess! Now we have to pay to practice what we preach.  We are going to risk $35,000 to clean up our list of 3,500 recipients.

I’ve come up with a rather costly experiment to update old data and get back some new relevant leads.  We will offer to buy our mailing recipient and a friend breakfast! The catch?  Log onto your pURL (personalized website), refer a friend, update your data, and we will mail both of you a $5 gift card of your choice (Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks).  We will also provide them with the option to opt out of our mailing list for good (but sorry, no free gift!).

It may seem like a drastic measure, but it’s a huge challenge to clean a business database.  With high turn-overs and small companies popping up and going under, it is difficult to keep up on what and who is current.  Usually we suggest NCOA (National Change of Address) as a cost effective solution to update old records.  We match your database with what’s on file with the United States Postal Service to get the new changes of address.  This is great for residential mailings lists,  but not for businesses!  The post office has no clue who works where.  This makes B2B correspondence and maintaining an in-house database a great challenge for any direct marketer.

I’m excited to see what the response rate will be.  I’ll share the results once the experiment is complete!

Tags: direct mail, direct marketing, ncoa, pURL

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