Preparing for Successful VDP

If variable data printing were easy, it would be a commodity.

If you are working with direct mail marketing, e-mail marketing (with or without PURLs), mobile media marketing, transpromo or collateral fulfillment and you are trying to personalize the material to improve the response, then you know it is not easy to pull it all together.

The two most difficult parts of working with variable data (regardless of the delivery medium) are working with data to make sure it is accurate and relevant, and then integrating the data into the design of the piece in a meaningful, measurable format. Realistically, one is not more important than the other, because if either one is not properly implemented, the project is likely to fail. So let's start with data.

When people first think of cleaning and preparing a good database they commonly look at the address information, but it is much more than just running the information through a mail prep software package to make sure the addresses are formatted according to United States Postal Service (USPS) standards. Doing this helps to ensure the address is formatted properly by working with the "Coding Accuracy Support System" (CASS). What comes out of CASS is a properly formatted address that is then compared to the USPS's list of actual deliverable addresses. Through the use of "Delivery Point Verification" (DPV) the printer can make sure the address is a real existing business or residence.

Neither CASS nor DPV does anything to verify that the person the mail piece is addressed to is still at that address. For residences you can run the address through the "National Change of Address" (NCOA) service, which looks at who lives at that address and validates the name to the address, but it does not work as well with businesses. A business can complete a change of address card for the USPS if the company moves to a new location, but an individual cannot fill out a change of address card if they change jobs and start working for another business. So you can lose a lot of these contacts in the business world.

What can you do to fix these addresses? Maybe the bigger question is why should you be concerned about fixing them? Let's say you sent out a 20,000-piece mailing and 5 percent of your addresses were deemed undeliverable, and of the pieces that were delivered there was a 4 percent response rate, which generated an average sale of $200. The lost revenue from these bad addresses would be $8,000 (i.e., 20,000 pieces x .05 undeliverable addresses x.04 response rate x $200 per sale). And that does not consider the lifetime value of a customer.

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