The success of a direct mail campaign depends on many factors, such as the message you are sending, the design you are using, and many others. But one of the most important points is the mailing list. Very often the mailing addresses that we manually write on an envelop or add into a CRM contain typos and errors: numbers, spelling mistakes or wrong zip codes. As a result, your customers don’t receive your postcard and are erroneously excluded from your current–and future–direct mail campaigns.  

And that’s a pity as direct mail has one of the strongest ROIs in direct response marketing. In fact, direct mail’s response rates beat digital channels by a landslide.

The tangibility of direct mail can help you stand apart from your competitors. Physical marketing messages command the full attention of the recipient. But—direct mail only works if you can actually get it into your customer’s mailbox

Nothing will kill your direct mail ROI like an outdated or typo-laden direct mail list. This is why direct mailing address validation is so important.

What is Direct Mailing Address Validation

Undelivered direct mail is a waste of your direct mail budget, from campaign design and targeting to printing and postage. Plus, it can even skew your customer data. If you’re tracking direct mail performance results, you may misinterpret undeliverables as poor fits for a targeted segment. This is where direct mailing address validation comes in.

Direct mailing address validation is a new feature available within Inkit that takes the addresses you submit and compares them to the USPS address verification registry. This automated process ensures the accuracy of all of the mailing addresses on your direct mail list before your mailer goes out. This works quite similarly to email address validation.

If you want to send direct mail within the United States, you must take into consideration the valid address format and make sure your mailing list passes the mailing address validation before your marketing campaign is launched.

The USPS address verification requirements include the following:

• All capital letters
• A valid and deliverable address
• Included company name, apartment number, or suite number if applicable
• Valid USPS acronyms and abbreviations
• A valid ZIP+4
• No commas or periods

Cutting your direct mail costs by correcting easily avoidable mistakes in mailing address frees up to spend for other areas of your marketing budget or business operations. Moreover, the postal services don’t keep track of your customers’ mailing addresses changes. Before you mail your next direct mail campaign, make sure you are using Inkit’s direct mailing address validation tool to:

• Avoid the ‘human error’ problem
• Keep your mailing lists up to date
• And consequently, improve the deliverability of your postcards to your prospects and customers.

Inkit’s direct mailing address validation tool helps marketers to instantly validate their mailing addresses in real-time. In such a way, the quality of mailing lists in your databases improves greatly. In addition, every time when you add a new contact and type in a new address or upload a new mailing list from your CRM to Inkit’s system, the data is instantly checked and verified. If the system detects any invalid or inaccurate data in the recorded mailing address, it will immediately inform you of an error.  

3 More Benefits of Direct Mailing Address Validation

While the most obvious reason to validate postal addresses for direct mail is simply to ensure your mail reaches intended recipients, there are several additional benefits. These include:

Mailing Address Validation Benefit #1. Better Direct Mail Segmentation

Just like the email software and digital marketing tools, direct mail automation platforms ensure better results if you take into account a variety of behavioral and demographic customer data when segmenting your lists and planning your campaigns.  

When you’re segmenting your street address lists of customers and prospects for direct mail workflows, you need reliable data. Whether you’re targeting consumers based on age, gender, geography, purchase history, interests or behaviors, segmenting only works if your customer information is accurate. Once you have identified a mailing address as deliverable via direct mail address validation, you can append additional points. As soon as you know an address is valid, you can work on capturing additional data via direct mail because you know the people on your list are checking their mail.

Validating the database before the campaign’s launch–especially when it’s something as important as customer’s address–can save marketers lots of time. Otherwise, for all your undelivered direct mail you’ll need to first, identify where the problem occurred, second, find the correct address, and lastly, fix it in all your records to avoid further mishaps. The cost of a mistake increases the longer it goes unaddressed, pun intended).  

With Inkit’s mailing address validation tool, you don’t need to correct the invalid data manually. You can also save money as you won’t spend additional costs on return to sender mail.

Pro tip: Use one of our direct mail integrations to seamlessly track direct mail data along with data from digital campaigns.

Mailing Address Validation Benefit # 2. Improved Accuracy in Personalization

Inkit enables marketers to personalize direct mail just as you might personalize email or other marketing. With our platform, you can customize direct mail content based on previous purchases, browsing history, cart abandonment, appointment dates and more.

Personalized direct mail brings people that special ‘human touch’ we find lacking in the globalized digital world around. As research shows, 71% of customers feel frustrated when they get impersonal marketing shopping experience, and 59% claim that personalized marketing tools influence their decision about making a purchase.

Personalization can help your business:

• Increase ROI by 15-20% and grow sales by at least 10%.
• Connect with your customers – it’s easier to increase customer satisfaction and to make them convert when you personalize the message and offer, thus tailoring them to people’s preferences
• Build brand loyalty – customers always appreciate privileges. Offer them some and you will get long-term loyal buyers. Moreover, loyal customers are a powerful source of the most potent, but absolutely free word-of-mouth advertising.

Of course, the reason we highly recommend personalizing direct mail is to make marketing function more like a real conversation with the consumer. Personalized marketing messages help the consumer feel more connected to your brand, and direct mailing address validation can help you catch errors that would mar your personalization strategy otherwise. This will help you improve more sophisticated personalization strategies based on customer location and relocation, etc.

Mailing Address Validation Benefit # 3. Stronger Cross-Channel Campaigns

Today’s marketers use multiple marketing channels and artificial intelligence-based marketing platforms to ensure smooth customer experience in all possible ways, across all possible channels. The more you engage with your customers via all the channels of their choice, the better the campaign’s effectiveness across all online and offline marketing channels.

While direct mail is an effective direct response channel all on its own, it works even better when part of a larger cross-channel strategy. Most marketers who use Inkit actually choose our direct mail software because they want a tool that works well with other marketing automation platforms. This allows them to sync online and offline efforts. Direct mail ROI improves significantly when you successfully reinforce it with digital marketing (or vice versa). For example, you might send a few steps of an email sequence and then follow-up with a postcard. The physical marketing piece is a tangible reminder that either reinforces your digital messages or gets you in the door when digital won’t (when your emails aren’t being opened, for instance).

When you use mailing address validation in Inkit and email validation in your email tool, you can be more confident in your cross-channel campaigns. You can design an integrated campaign, knowing that you have strong chance of connecting with consumers both online and off.

Try Inkit’s Direct Mailing Address Validation Tools

Direct mail, when done well, can help you acquire new customers, re-engage wandering ones, reactivate lapsed customers and even foster loyalty. Direct mail address management and validation is an important step in each one of these processes.

With Inkit, you can always send direct mail to the right addressee without any mistakes– no more failed or returned to senders mailers. You don’t need to spend time going to the post office or checking your customers’ zip codes as well.

Our direct mailing address validation tools are connected with the USPS address verification delivery system. Considering that 17% of Americans change addresses annually, it is essential to use mailing address validation in order to reach your clients.

You can start cleaning up your direct mail lists with Inkit today. To give our direct mailing address validation tool a try, contact us and set up a demo now.

Of course, the reason we highly recommend personalizing direct mail is to make marketing function more like a real conversation with the consumer. Personalized marketing messages help the consumer feel more connected to your brand, and direct mail address verification can help you catch errors that would mar your personalization strategy otherwise. This will help you improve more sophisticated personalization strategies based on customer location and relocation, etc.

3. Stronger Cross-Channel Campaigns

While direct mail is an effective direct response channel all on its own, it works even better when part of a larger cross-channel strategy. Most marketers who use Inkit actually choose our direct mail software because they want a tool that works well with other marketing automation platforms. This allows them to sync online and offline efforts. Direct mail ROI improves significantly when you successfully reinforce it with digital marketing (or vice versa). For example, you might send a few steps of an email sequence and then follow-up with a postcard. The physical marketing piece is a tangible reminder that either reinforces your digital messages or gets you in the door when digital won’t (when your emails aren’t being opened, for instance).

When you use address validation in Inkit and email validation in your email tool, you can be more confident in your cross-channel campaigns. You can design an integrated campaign, knowing that you have strong chance of connecting with consumers both online and off.

Try Our Direct Mail Address Verification Tools

Direct mail, when done well, can help you acquire new customers, re-engage wandering ones, reactivate lapsed customers and even foster loyalty. Direct mail address validation is an important step in each one of these processes.

You can start cleaning up your direct mail lists with Inkit today. To give our direct mail address verification tool a try, contact us and set up a demo now.