People Still Like Mail!

...we knew we were stuffing those envelopes for something...

Sure, email is cool, but real mail still gets the response. In a recent survey by International Communications Research it was shown that consumers overwhelmingly prefer real mail (sometimes called "snail mail" by cynics and heretics) over email for receiving offers. It wasn't even close, with real mail beating out email 73% to 18%. With the mounting volume of spam in email it isn't hard to understand why.

The survey was commissioned by Pitney Bowes, and was the fourth such study the company has sponsored since 1999. Surprisingly, the study also showed that more people prefer to get invoices and other financial documents through the mail - 80% vs. 10% for email. We wouldn't be too quick to pronounce the death of the paper invoice.

Of course email has its place and its advantages in certain applications - a brief newsletter, say, with insightful, pithy writing. But trying to use email as a sole means of communication is risky. Many of our association clients report a weakened relationship with their members when they became overly dependent on email and let their real mail programs diminish a few years ago. There is something about having a physical piece of mail to handle and study that gives real mail a perceived value beyond its content. Real mail also provides a number of ways to attract attention and garner response. The only first impression that email can give a consumer is a subject line - and there are a lot of barriers before you can even get that much through to the reader!

Our suggestion? Don't abandon email, but use it judiciously and do it well - use a professional provider to get proper formatting and tracking. We can help you with that at ProList. And be sure to keep the real mail flowing too. Your members and customers want to get something real from you, and they are more likely to respond to a real mail offer than an email. At ProList we can handle all of your mail and email needs, as well as keep track of how you are using your data so you get the best use out of both your real mail and email communications.

Are You Sending Junk Mail?

You heard us right. Mail sent to the wrong place is junk mail.

No one likes the J-word, but there's no denying it. When you get mail at your house that's intended for someone else - someone who moved out a year ago - it's junk mail, and mail boxes are clogged with it - 9.7 billion pieces in 2004 and climbing. It's the dreaded UAA - Undeliverable As Addressed. Now the Postal Service wants to help...or else.

"We need addresses that are complete, current and correct," said Tom Day, senior vice president of intelligent mail and addressing at the Postal Service, and the Postal Service is taking important steps to achieve that.

The Postal Service spends more than a billion dollars a year forwarding mail and dealing with incorrectly addressed mail. In August they put in a new Delivery Point Validation (DPV) requirement that you read about in our last action packed issue, and expect new move update requirements for Standard Mail in late 2008, all aimed at reducing the amount of UAA mail. If you don't comply you could lose your postage discounts. You don't want to lose your postage discounts.

On the plus side, the Postal Service has made it much easier and less expensive to get address correction information through its Intelligent Mail initiative. ProList customers can already take advantage of OneCode ACS on their First-Class Mail, and later this fall will be able to get the same service on Standard Mail. ProList, and our tracking business, trackmymail.com, are industry leaders in these brand-new technologies. It's complicated stuff, but we make it easy for you.

We now can work with you to take all of the required steps to get your addresses into tip-top shape. As much as the Postal Service wants you to have good addresses, the real winner is you! Your mailings can be better targeted - and eliminating the undeliverables reduces your costs and increases your response rates by default. So give us a call at ProList and we'll help you stop sending junk mail and only send out mailings that work.