Having a strong message to send out to your prospects and existing clients is essential to running a successful direct marketing campaign, whether your efforts are in your own country or international. But it doesn’t matter how strong that message is if it isn’t getting to the right people, and that’s where bad list hygiene can really knock you off your game. In fact, it can lead to these disastrous consequences.
Irrelevant Outreach
One of the main consequences isn’t that the mail never arrives at its destination, but that it does arrive but to a completely inappropriate audience. For instance, say that you have a lawn care service, but the people you’re mailing to are apartment dwellers. These individuals typically have little to no need for lawn care services because, since they don’t own the property, they’re not the ones making those decisions. Worst of all, since the mail-out was delivered, you’ll never know why they didn’t respond, which means you won’t have the data to make adjustments to your future efforts.
Wasted Overhead
In the U.S. each year, the country’s United States Postal Service reports that it drops about 9 billion pieces of mail per year due to inaccurate address information. That’s around 28 mail pieces per year per resident, and if you take the current price for a stamp in the U.S. — 49 cents — that adds up to $4.41 billion that are wasted each year on non-deliverable mail pieces. Can you imagine what these numbers are internationally? - Talk about disastrous! With many industries operating on low profit margins, that’s a loss sure to leave a dent. If you can get bad list hygiene under control, it can make a significant impact on your bottom line (and that doesn’t even count the amount of new business you might be able to generate by sending to the right addresses).
Spam Traps
This applies more to email, but it’s still worth mentioning. Internet Service Providers often use defunct email addresses to identify spammers. If your email list is packed with addresses that are no longer in service, it’s a red flag that you could be a spammer. The hard part of this is that you might have the best of intent, but that does you little good with faulty information.
Horrible Response Rates
If you take the sum of the first three consequences listed above, they all add up to this larger problem. When you aren’t sending to relevant addresses (or even ones that exist), and you’re leaking money like a sieve out of blown overhead, and your brand has developed a bad reputation because your email efforts more often than not end up in the Spam folder, you can’t help but have horrible response rates. Horrible response rates equal little to no revenue, and that means you end up digging a hole that is hard to escape.
Negative Brand Reputation
When your brand reputation is underwater, you will find yourself drowning in debt as more and more people lose the faith to do business with your company.
In Summary
Bad list hygiene is more relevant today than it has ever been when it comes to the things that derail your direct marketing efforts. By partnering with SkyPostal, you will not only ensure that your direct mail pieces are delivered, but that the addresses you are sending to are valid and relevant. That’s just one of the areas that we can tackle to help you reach more relevant potential customers and, hopefully, increase your bottom line.
