Partially addressed mail is a cost-effective way to grow your customer base

Using your existing customer base to demographically profile your ideal market and then taking that profile and applying it to specific locations, will target your marketing activity.  This will grow your customer base and increase the ROI of your marketing activity.

One problem – GDPR restricts your growth activity to non-customers, or does it?

GDPR is there to protect our privacy and stop companies from obtaining your personal contact information without your permission. Example: an email or phone call is targeted activity that is illegal if you have not given permission and any company who does this without your permission can be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/. If they are found to be negligent and breaking this European Law, they can expect to receive a substantial fine.

However, receiving information by post addressed to the occupant, householder, boss, etc., is allowed within this data protection law. The recipient can choose to open the letter or not and there is no personal information on the outer envelope or any of part of the content.

The acquisition of data for ‘Partially Addressed’ advertising mail is cheaper than purchasing data for the usual growth acquisition activity, as you are not purchasing the name or the personal contact details. There is also a saving on the postage of up to 14p per item due to the Royal Mail incentives currently.

Blue Print Direct Mail can use a combination of the Royal Mail-validated PAF address database and intelligent software, to target partially addressed mail campaigns, this allows specific postcodes to be targeted where they are statistically more likely to be most effective. This service is proving to be statistically lower than personalised addressed mail, however, substantially more successful than door drops and available in many diverse formats to strengthen the message and brand.

Head of Sales and Marketing Maureen Bott said: “Partially addressed mail is a way of meeting the GDPR requirements yet allowing charities and companies to expand their field of reach. Purchasing the non-personalised data in the demographically proven areas is substantially cheaper and Royal Mail have created a special rate for companies to take advantage of this service provided the partially addressed data base is greater than 10,000 records.’

Blue Print Direct Mail can help with the profiling of your existing database, provide a target database by working with you to dedupe against your existing customer base and help with the design and mailing to meet the Royal Mail requirements and obtain the reduced postal rates.

Maureen Bott continues, ‘Partially Addressed marketing mail campaigns are GDPR compliant, which opens up the opportunity to grow again. Having worked with our charity and commercial customers on these campaigns, we understand that without a method to grow an organisation, they will shrink, due to natural attrition. We have experienced the delight of our customers on this initiative and are open to help others take advantage of this new venture’.

Over the past 20 years, Blue Print Direct Mail has expanded its services to include: design, laser printing, automated and manual order fulfillment, cost-effective postal services, and print management. They help their customers to target their marketing communication and deliver the message to their customer’s doorstep. From just 1 record to a million records, we take care to meet our customer’s exacting requirements.

*NB: Postage costs can vary depending on provider and format –Partially Addressed attracts a 4p discount rather than a fixed price