The cost for having your list checked is very economical (about $5.00 per thousand records) and will allow you to keep getting your message out to as many people in your list as possible.

At times you can see up to a 10% undeliverable rate, and it can even be higher on older lists that you have been using for a while. Average is more like 5% undeliverable so let’s take a look at numbers at that rate.

If you mail 10,000 and get 5% back for bad addresses: 10,000 x .05 = 500 pieces.

You will have paid postage on 500 pieces that did not reach their destination.

So if you mail to your list again without cleaning it you have just wasted: 500 x $0.23 = $115.00.

If you were to NCOA that list at a rate of $5.00 per thousand you would have spent: 10 x $5.00 = $50.00.

So you have three choices when faced with a list that needs cleaning:

1. Spend hours deleting every return that you receive from your list.

2. Waste $115.00 or more in postage every time you mail to that list.

or

3. Have list checked by an NCOA service and get back in touch with customers that may have moved, for around one tenth cost.

The NCOA service is easiest and most effective way to keep your postage costs down.

iii)How often do they update their information? They should be able to answer this question and should be updating their information monthly.

You can get burnt on mailing lists – it is most expensive part of your campaign. Ask friends who own businesses. Don’t just purchase from first person that tries to sell you mailing lists. Do your research.

3. Select what media to use. (i.e., Direct Mail, Television, Radio, etc.)

This decision will depend on both your budget and your target market. If you have not done a good deal of marketing in past we recommend picking one media to start. This is much easier to keep track of and you will better be able to tell whether or not it is working. Also, since repetition is key to marketing success, using one media to begin with will help you reach same people multiple times. If you run a newspaper ad and send out a postcard, you run risk of majority of people only seeing your ad once. However, if you send out postcard twice you can guarantee that you get your message to same people twice and you will start to build recognition.

Once you are getting returns that you want from first media, or if you decide that it is not working for you, you can branch out into another form of advertising. Over time you will build up a very diverse marketing plan.

4. Make a Schedule and Stick with It.

Figure out how many people you have in your target market. For this example we will use Direct Mail Marketing. If you have a mailing list of people in your target market that has 1500 names, figure out how many times per month you can mail a postcard to them and still stay within your monthly budget. Once you come up with this number, do it!

The importance of having a marketing plan cannot be stressed enough. Create one and follow it and you’ll start seeing benefits.