Since 2 October 2017, Australia Post increased their prices. These price changes affect all services which can often mean the beloved, personal form of ‘snail mail’ can cost more than what is in the envelope.
Whilst the increase is relatively small for an individual service, i.e. the postage price per standard letter has risen from AUS $0.70 to AUS $1.00, if you’re sending a large amount of direct mail for a campaign project, marketing or advertising, the price hop is significant to you and your business.
Sending letters, marketing material or correspondence to clients is a costly exercise. The time it takes to prepare the material, printing, stationery and labour can cost hundreds of dollars, that’s before the documents are even posted! On top of this, once postage costs are paid and the letters are in transit, there’s no guarantee they’ll reach their destination.
The problem lies with the challenge of keeping an up-to-date database of names, postal addresses, and telephone numbers almost an impossible task. With staff turnover, business changes, and employees moving around the business, it’s very unlikely every envelope you send out will make it to who it is intended for.
With this in mind, it’s important to plan your distribution, instead of sending out a pile of envelopes with your fingers crossed that most or even some will end up being read by your target audience.
While electronic and phone media have great advantages, direct mail is still a strong and effective system in ensuring communication between sender and its receiver.
To use direct mail there are precautionary steps you can take to increase your success rate of ensuring it ends up in the right hands. Also to keep in mind, that not receiving a ‘return to sender’ doesn’t mean that you’ve necessarily had a successful delivery.
Start looking at your mailing/distribution list and filter out the unnecessary contacts that are out of date or irrelevant to the information you are sending. One option is to go through your list and call every contact to check if your information is current, but that may not be the most efficient process, especially if you have hundreds of people to get through. Ultimately you’re looking to save money and time, so making phone calls every few months doesn’t quite meet that credential.
The Datawash team offer a solution to our clients. We use an advanced address hygiene service for organisations that require an up-to-date direct marketing database. The service we provide is stress-free and uncomplicated to our clients. You simply registerer your details with us, which then creates a profile for your business where you’re able to Login, upload your files for processing. In less than it takes to finish a coffee, Datawash empowers your business to know the accuracy of your customer database prior to direct marketing campaigns. Receive free statistics audits instantaneously for every database checked for accuracy. There are no upfront costs and you only pay for those updated records you decide to download.
Datawash will keep your database up-to-date, quickly identify customers who have moved and ensure their details have been changed accordingly. As a licensee of the Australia Post National Change of Address (NCOA) and various other national databases, we can guarantee the most up to date knowledge of customer movements and a high professional standard of managing client data security.
Our goal is to make sure our clients campaign ROI has a positive success rate with low risk. Having a direct mail list of contacts, will save time, money and assist in creating a professional process standard to your organisation.
