Most Standard Mail mailers are aware of the USPS Summer Sale scheduled for July 1 to September 30. Essentially, for every incremental piece a company mails in excess of 105% of what it mailed during the same time period in 2009, the USPS will provide a 30% postage rebate. Specific requirements and rules of the Summer Sale are available from the USPS.
Companies can take full advantage of the Summer Sale and use it not only as a way to increase acquisition mailings, but to also achieve a reactivation strategy. It costs significantly less to rebuild profitable relationships with former customers than it does to find new acquisition names, as former customers are already aware of your company and products. This is an attractive option for the Summer Sale. By reducing postage costs by approximately one-third on the incremental mail volumes, it reduces the break-even point on these mailings.
Determining which former customers should be included in your reactivation efforts requires a close look at a couple factors. The most important is the quality of the records — the data must be accurate, meaning potential delivery issues such as non ZIP+4 coded, missing or invalid secondary (apartment) number, vacant or seasonal should be identified and most likely dropped prior to mailing.
The second critical factor when determining which former customers to reactivate is to verify whether or not the person being mailed is still at the address you have. Some times older records cannot be updated or verified without data external to your company. A good service provider will verify that the individual is still at that address using their external data assets. Doing so can provide up to a 40% increase in the response of those records versus the non-verified records.
Those planning on taking advantage of the USPS Summer Sale should consider expanding reactivation mailings. To make these mailings even more effective and beneficial, do not mail records with deliverability issues and try to mail only those with name and address verified using a third party service providers’ data assets.
