Sustainable Direct Mail: Spring Cleaning Your Mailing List
Sustainability matters. Because not only is it good practice, it’s something that can benefit you in a variety of ways. From consumers willing to spend more money on sustainable products to investors, regulators, or even future employees, there are many ways to incorporate sustainable practices into the way you work.
Today, we’d like to look at one tiny element of your business—your direct mailing list—and discuss how keeping it clean and hygienic can help you in your sustainability initiatives.
Background: The Importance of Sustainability
It’s easy to say that being sustainable (and partnering with sustainable companies) is just about doing the right thing. Well, yeah. But for the skeptical or cynical of you—the ones who probably weren’t clicking this article anyway—here are some good reasons that green is good.
Consumers Care: Consumers are shifting their spending toward companies who demonstrate good sustainability practices. Between 2018 and 2022, products making ESG claims demonstrated 6.4% growth vs. 4.7% at companies that didn’t (McKinsey).
Regulators Care: A statement even more true if you’re making sustainability claims. Whether it’s simply to avoid greenwashing charges or a way to operate affordably in a state like Illinois, regulators are watching your environmental impact.
Investors Care: From institutional to individual, many investors are looking to ensure their portfolio is green in more ways than one.
Knowing all of this, there are many great ways to practice sustainability. Some easier (and less impactful on your everyday operations) than others.
And today, we’re going to explore one way to drive sustainability and possibly save a few… thousand dollars: Cleaning Your Mailing List.
Bad Mailing List Hygiene is Unsustainable in Many Ways
Poor mailing list hygiene can be a drain on both the environment and your budget. And it’s good practice to look over your lists once in a while to ensure that messages are only going to the right people.
After all, sending mail isn’t cheap—postage, paper, and printing costs can quickly add up if you’re not careful.
How to Clean Up Your Mailing List
With spring upon us, now might be a good time to clean your CRM data and look over your lists.
Much like cleaning an email list, the process of cleaning a direct mail list is good practice—even if many of the reasons for doing so are different. But either way, the results are the same: The right people receive the right message.
But a clean mailing list is so much more than that too. Whereas poor email list hygiene might require a bit more processing power and might put you on bad terms with an email service provider, poor direct mail list hygiene is a direct cost.
Printing and postage costs are measurable. And so is their impact on the environment. And if you don’t have the right data or processes in place to ensure mail is going to the right place, you could be losing a whole lot of money.
Tips to Clean Your Direct Mail List
So, what are some tips to ensure a clean, efficient, and sustainable direct mail list? How can you maintain the high ROI that exists in direct mail? Here are just a few ways to achieve this:
Document Your Processes: A good mailing list clean starts with good documentation. Establish standards, assign ownership, categorize, and schedule time to get the job done.
De-Dupe: One of the easiest ways to get the right value out of direct mail is to see if anyone is getting the same message twice. Take advantage of data-matching logic to identify duplicates and build a complete record.
Cross Check: Take advantage of the National Change of Address Database (NCOA) to update recipients. Ensure addresses are exact using the Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS).
Audit Performance: See how your mail is performing. Get deliverable data, reporting, and other pertinent information from your mail provider and make sure everything is going where it’s supposed to.
Consider Automated Direct Mail: Automated direct mail software consists of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integration which gathers all the addresses from your company’s database and uses this as a reference whenever your company sends out mail. This process ensures that each mail piece sent out is delivered to the correct address.
Clean List, Green Print
At Sepire, we were built on accurate sending and sustainability. So whether you want to ensure your list is clean—or want a sustainable direct mail partner—we’ve got you covered.
Our CompliChain™ Technology is built to provide you an easy-to-use mail management platform, and our process automates many of the aforementioned ‘spring cleaning’ activities before you even send. In fact, as a 100% mail delivered company, merging, purging, cross checking, and auditing is just part of how we operate.
And for the rest, our technology actively reports on successes and opportunities to improve.
But where we really stand out is in terms of sustainability.
How Sepire Does Sustainable Direct Mail Right
Our paper is recycled, our ink is water based, and our presses are emission free. Pair this with an extremely lean manufacturing process, commitment to reforestation, and membership in the UN Global Compact, and you get the accuracy you need from a partner you can trust.
Check out our commitment to direct mail sustainability here. Ready to talk print with one of our subject matter experts? Let’s talk.