Managing Customer Deliverability Expectations

You have a mailing list in hand that you know or expect to be old. You expect the undeliverable rate will be high. You know your customer will freak out when 20% or more of the pieces are returned. What can you do? Your options include:

• Use Standard Mail (if possible) so no undeliverable pieces are returned and the customer never knows how many pieces aren’t delivered,
• Manually verify all the names and addresses (good luck!), or
• Discuss the likely results with the customer.

We recommend the last option. Getting a big batch of mail pieces returned does have an upside, however you better make sure your customer understands this before it happens.

First, make sure the customer actually wants a targeted mailing list to use in the not-too-distant future. If not, perhaps you want to discuss EDDM or other options. If the goal is to have a targeted mailing list, then a discussion about cleansing the old list is in order.

You can offer to NCOA the old list to pick up address changes back to 48 months rather than the typical 18 months. This gets you a search of all the NCOA records available. It costs more and should improve deliverability by a few percentage points. However, it will not overcome the “exact match” privacy limitations of the NCOA process (see the previous blog Handling Lousy Mailing Lists).

You can discuss non-USPS address validation with your customer. This should identify more bad or changed addresses. However,there is no guarantee this will change the old list from lousy to great, or even good. The issue here is how you determine that the improvement in deliverability is cost effective.

Ultimately, the surest way to fix the old list is to do a mailing and take the hit on the inevitable un-deliverables. However, once this is done and the undeliverable addresses are scrubbed from the old mailing list, you have a much higher quality mailing list. The “new” mailing list will not be perfect but no mailing list is ever perfect. The use and maintenance of a mailing list is the only way to keep deliverable rates high.

You could save some money by mailing “cheap and dirty” piece. The undeliverables will never see it, however the targeted recipients who do receive it may end up with a poor impression of you. The cost savings of this approach may not be worth the long-term results.

A scrubbed mailing list has numerous benefits. First, and foremost, is the knowledge that a high percentage of the mailed pieces will reach the intended audience. Subsequent mailings (in weeks or a few months) might be sent at discounted postage rates with a high degree of confidence of good delivery rates. Alternating First Class and Standard mailings is a way minimize costs  while keeping the mailing list in good shape. With a good mailing list, you can also discuss a number of other options to help increase your customers’ response rates and business such as data enhancement and personalization with variable data printing.

When a customer hands you a lousy mailing list, look it as an opportunity to generate more business for yourself and your customer. The customer looks to you for your expertise in mailing and expects you to work magic. So, work your magic by managing expectations.

Handling Lousy Mailing Lists

What do you do when a print customer hands you a mailing list that hasn’t been used in years? You could assure the customer you’ll process the list through the NCOA to identify bad or changed addresses. That solves the problem. Right?

When you get 20% or more of the mailed pieces returned as undeliverable, there’s bound to be some blowback. At best, the customer is going to wonder what went wrong…more likely, what you did wrong. Now what? You can rip the list to shreds while cursing at the customer for having a terrible list. Explain how you are filing a formal complaint with the USPS about shoddy service. Suddenly pretend you don’t speak English. In tough situations, claim you need emergency treatment after being attacked by a spider high on toner. Or, be better prepared when you are handed a potentially lousy mailing list.

Let’s start with what to do when you get the suspicious list and discuss your options for maximizing the deliverability rate (or at least avoid the blame for lots of returned pieces).

Start by asking a few pertinent questions:

• Where did the list come from?
• When was it used last?
• Was/is it updated regularly?
• What’s the purpose of the mailing? (e.g. carpet bombing or precision strikes)

If the answers are along the lines of “rented it”, “it’s old”, “years ago”, “I don’t remember” and “I don’t know”, there are your red flags.

Fixing Mailing List Delivery Problems

The customer probably expects (or hopes) that you wave a magic wand to turn his lousy mailing list into gold. If you expect that the NCOA (National Change of Address) processing will keep the undeliverable rate low for an old, dubious list - think again!

Consider these points about mailing lists, the NCOA process and deliverability:

• Estimates are that more than 40 million (about 15%) American addresses change each year, but some 15 to 20% of people move without filling out a change of address notice. So, that two-year old mailing list could have 30% of the addresses changed, but only 24% of those changes may be known by the USPS.

• The NCOA is not an address validator. Simply because the NCOA process does not “flag” a record does not mean the piece will be deliverable. The NCOA will only flag those records where a valid change of address notice is on file or those identified as a “nixie” (undeliverable-as-addressed for whatever reason) by the USPS.

• For the consumers’ privacy protection, the NCOA process requires an exact match of name and address in the mailing list (with some nicknames and misspellings excepted). If a mailing list record does not match the name and address on file in the NCOA database, no new address information is provided nor will the address be flagged as being invalid. Because this is such a common misunderstanding, we’ll say it a second time: 

If a name and address in your mailing list do not exactly match the name and address in the NCOA database, it is very unlikely you will receive any sort of information to indicate there is anything wrong with the address. If you do get some information, it will be because: 1) someone has a correct and current change of address notice on file, or 2) the USPS has identified an issue delivering mail to that address.

• The older the list, the more mismatched names and addresses that will likely pass through the NCOA “unflagged” and the more returned pieces.

• The age and maintenance of a mailing list affects deliverability but other factors such as address type (residential, business, etc.), demographics (young, old, students, families, singles, etc.) and the time of year (holidays, vacations, snowbirds, etc.) can also have an affect.

• Undeliverable First Class mail is returned to the sender but undeliverable Standard mail goes in the trash.

• There are non-USPS services that offer to validate addresses. This done by comparing a mailing list to privately owned, frequently used, mailing lists (credit bureaus, insurance companies, magazines, etc.). However, the cost of these services may not be justifiable.

See how counting on the NCOA process can lead you into a deep pile of muck when your customer’s list is lousy?

We’ll help you out of the muck in the next blog.

CPrint, Double Wides and Insourcing

We recently met up with John Giles at the CPrint conference. The conference is always great - learning as much from the attendees as the presenters. Moreover, John is the only person we know capable of interjecting doublewide trailers into a discussion about print shops.

John’s epistle in the May 2012 edition of Quick Printing magazine makes a strong argument for outsourcing a variety of work to broaden service offerings, to increase profits or both. However, we suggest there is at least one case where insourcing (the opposite of outsourcing) may be advantageous.

Consider the print shop owner who faces a minimum charge of $120 or more at the mail house. It’s probably hard to do many small (like 350 piece) postcard jobs profitably at that rate. Outsourcing the address presorting and inkjet printing costs the print shop owner $120. Alternatively, the print shop owner could outsource the address presorting and have VDP print files created at the same time for as little as $60. He prints the pre-addressed VDP files, cuts, sorts and delivers the job to the Post Office - “insourcing” the address printing and mailing process and reducing job costs by $60 or more.

You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, but that’s just trading one type of outsourcing for another.” It might seem that way. Outsourcing the address presorting to the mail house or another service company is certainly similar. However, rather than the mail house inkjet printing the addresses, the print shop prints pre-addressed on its own digital press. The print shop also does the sorting of the pieces in to mail trays and delivering to the Post Office. Therefore, the address presorting is a push and the printing and mailing are “insourced”. Two out of three is a majority, and the bottom line is that the print shop saves money by “insourcing” the mailing process.

Insourcing the mailing process has some other advantages including:

- Avoiding “rush” charges

- Better print quality

- No “overs” to print, and

- Not disclosing print customer identities.

Sure hope we didn’t steal the wheels off John’s outsourcing double wide. 

The Prescription for VDP Business

This is a tough time to be in the printing business. Business is sluggish and new competition seems to pop up everyday. Adding new services, like web site design, is not always easy or inexpensive. However, an old solution that has eluded many print shop owners may actually be the answer for new business…variable data printing.

Here’s a lighthearted look at a prescription for the challenges of VDP:

One printer who treated his problems with EZ-VDP told us: "I've gotten almost $10,000 in business from this customer in the last five months. When he came to me, I didn't know how I was going do his job. If I hadn’t found your EZ-VDP service, I couldn't have done it."

With EZ-VDP, you can sell and print VDP jobs without having to be a VDP expert…or buying and learning any new software. Use it simply as a way to do in-house addressing and mailing or to deliver fully personalized print jobs.

See why EZ-VDP is your prescription for more business and profits...

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Eaten by the Mail House

Charles Darwin purportedly said, “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” We see Darwinian adaptation in the business world all around us: drug stores selling groceries and grocery stores with pharmacies, car washes doing oil changes and oil change shops washing cars and on and on. It’s move and counter-move with competitors, rather than nature, defining the environment.

Mail Houses Turn Print Shop

With more mail houses going into the retail printing business, what will we see the print shops do…start mailing themselves, stop selling any mailing jobs or offering breakfast burritos with every print job? We know many print shop owners with strategies to avoid becoming a much smaller version of Kodak. The bankruptcy of Kodak (who developed the first digital camera in 1975) points out the consequences of not adapting - of ignoring competitors’ moves - of being oblivious to a changing environment.

One print shop owner recently sent us a very succinct email explaining his version of adapting: “You guys have been very helpful with getting us up to speed on mailing, a totally new activity for us. Prior to now, we have been outsourcing the mailing function. Since the mailing houses are becoming printers, though, we have to become mailers.” That’s simple enough. If the mail shops are going to compete for printing work, he is not going to help them by identifying his customers to them or sending them mailing business.

Good or Bad?

The revelation that the mail house has turned competitor may actually be a blessing rather than a harsh reality. We know numerous print shops that keep paying outrageous prices to mail houses for even the simplest postcard mailing jobs. Other print shops pay more reasonable prices but find it takes three, four or more days for their jobs to be mailed (without paying a premium for expedited service). High costs and/or slow service put the print shops in a less-than-competitive position by over which they have no control. How do maintain or grow business in this type of situation?

So, the mail houses are acting in a predatory fashion by going into the printing business, right? Absolutely...from the print shops' perspective! The mail houses' are acting for their survival just as a leopard that chases down and devours a baby gazelle. Leopards have to eat. Mail houses have to adapt to a slow market and a decreasing number of print shop customers. What does the print shop gazelles do?

One thing you never see on the nature programs is a gazelle standing still while the leopard bears down on it. Nope. Gazelles run like hell to keep from being eaten. Are print shop owners placidly waiting to be eaten by the mail houses or running like hell? We see a growing number of print shop owners who recognize the threat and how they can use VDP to do their mailings in-house. Unfortunately, however, there are also many waiting for the leopard to strike.

Even if you're not in danger of being eaten, you could benefit from doing your own addressing and mailing. That's what our new EZ-VDP Addressing service enables you to do.

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Are You a Redundant Printer?

We don’t mean redundant as in not needed. What we mean by "redundant printer" is one who needlessly prints the same piece twice. Redundancy can be funny (visualize belt and suspenders), it can be good or it can be a waste of time, effort and money. We’ll look at the ways redundancy can be good or funny and then let you decide if there is anything good or funny (or useful) about redundant printing.

You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish

Why do people talk about tuna fish? What’s a tuna if not a fish? No one talks about salmon fish or trout fish. This type of redundancy (called Pleonasm) has found its way into everyday usage. Here are a few others:

“…receive your free gift” - We hear this so often, we ignore the silliness of it. How can anything be a gift if it isn’t free?

“hot water heater” - If you have hot water, do you need to heat it more? Perhaps, it would be more precise to call it a cold water heater, or maybe just leave it at water heater.

There’s another type of linguistic redundancy described on the internet as RAS syndrome (or “Repetitive Acronym Syndrome” syndrome). Do you have RAS syndrome? If you are guilty of using any of the following terms, you definitely have it:

“ATM machine” - Automatic Teller Machine machine

“LCD display” - Liquid Crystal Display display

“Pin number” - Personal Identification Number number

“VDP printing” - Variable Data Printing printing (we know we have RAS)

"Please RSVP" - RSVP is French for répondez s'il vous plaît, or "respond if it pleases you". So, we have "Please respond if it pleases you". Maybe sticking with English acronyms would cut down on RAS.

The What Failed?

There are circumstances when redundancy is good or even critical. Commercial airplanes have redundant control systems to avoid becoming expensive falling objects should the primary controls fail. Hospitals have redundant electrical power supplies (such as backup generators) since doctors aren’t too good at operating in the dark. While those are cases of critical redundancy, sometimes redundancy is simply good. Like chocolate cake with chocolate frosting topped by “Death by Chocolate” ice cream type of good. Have you noticed that choco-holics seem to take perverse pleasure in being redundant?

Redundant Printing

Everyday, hundreds of printers use their digital presses to print postcards (or other self-mailers). They then take the already printed postcards (plus the overs) to a mail house to have someone else print addresses on them with an inkjet printer. Digital presses are certainly capable of printing addresses (better than an inkjet), and the printers’ click charge won’t increase due to printing addresses. Therefore, inkjet addressing qualifies as a type of redundant printing. Factor in all the extra handling, the paperwork, transportation, the hassle and so forth, and it’s hard to find anything funny or useful about this type of redundant printing.

How to Stop Being Redundant

Yes. We know exactly why this type of redundant printing occurs everyday... something about creating print files. We also have a solution that permits printers to print, cut and drop off their self-mailers at the post office - skipping the inkjet addressing and the mail house.

It’s the newest addition to our EZ-VDP^SM services…EZ-VDP^SM Addressing.

Designed for small self-mailer jobs, it eliminates the issues (and costs) involved with using a mail house for inkjet addressing. If your mail house has a minimum charge for inkjet addressing that's more than $40, you ought to take a look at this new service.

Read more about EZ-VDP^SM Addressing…

Finally, there is no need to point out our raging affliction from RAS syndrome. We simply refuse to stop using terms such as “VDP printing” and “VDP print files”.

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Cashing In on the VDP Bonanza of 2012

The predictions are that 2012 will be a very interesting year and one that promises a substantial upsurge in the demand for variable data printing. We have the Mayan apocalypse forecasted for December 21st (get those personalized Christmas cards out early!). The biblical numerologist, Harold Camping, who told us the world would end in 2011 has checked his math and now says the right date is October 21, 2012 (think mailings for those for pre-Armageddon specials). Even the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has issued preparedness guides in the event of a zombie outbreak (survival-related industries should be advertising big time). While there may be a huge spike in personalized thank-you-for-your-business (and farewell) mailings, the real bonanza in VDP work will come from all of the campaigning focused on November 6, 2012.

[Update - The first political job of 2012 hit our inbox on January 3. The recruiting piece for campaign volunteers with 7,000 pieces.]

To put this into perspective, we did some “cocktail napkin” analysis of election season spending. More than $6.2 billion was spent on electioneering and promoting various issues during 2008. Similar expenditures during 2012 are predicted to be at least 30% higher than 2008 and should easily top $8 billion. Doesn’t that make your head spin?

Data from the Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org) indicates that 2012 campaign printing expenditures (postage not included) have been running around 10% of total expenditures (see complete details here…). That suggests there will be more than one-half billion dollars in additional printing work available in 2012. And, some portion of that half billion will require variable data printing. How much? Well, we can’t say for sure.

Nevertheless, we do see some trends for direct mail for political and issue-oriented printing:

• Increasing use of VDP for addressing and/or personalization
• More targeted messaging through versioning
• Fewer pieces per mailing but increasing frequency of mailings
• Growing demand for turnaround times (mailed) less than 24 hours
• Increasing use of variable graphics

A common type of VDP political work is issue-demographic personalization. These pieces use a specific issue message and a demographic-appropriate image as the focal point. For example, Mary Smith indicates in a telephone poll that education is her primary concern. The campaign turns around and sends her a postcard (usually the next day) versioned with their message on education combined with a picture of school-aged children on the front.

Another popular use of VDP by political campaigns falls into a category we call “the issue du jour”. To capitalize on the revelation that candidate Joe Blow spit on the sidewalk as a young child, his opponents send out postcards as quickly as possible claiming that their candidates never spit. In these situations, the printer typically receives artwork, image files and anywhere between 500 and 15,000 addresses…and has to have the job in the mail the next day. VDP is frequently a convenient (and usually less expensive) way to get this type of work done.

VDP is used with GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote) efforts to include geo-location information while fundraising messages often utilize personalized financial data to increase contributions.

What about the bug?

A union bug may be needed to secure certain political work but the requirement seems to be softening as the number of organizations and groups that are indifferent or prefer dealing with non-union shops is on the increase.

Political campaigns will continue to use mass mailings for broad branding and messaging however, 2012 should be a banner year for digital and variable data printing. If you’re ready to cash in on the 2012 VDP bonanza, good for you. If “variable” and “data” aren’t in your vocabulary, you may want to give us a call. In any event, here’s hoping that your zombie outbreaks are small ones and that you have a very profitable 2012.

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