The Problem

A direct Marketing Agency faced significant challenges with outdated mailing lists, leading to high volumes of undeliverable mail.

This resulted in wasted production costs on printing and postage, reduced response rates, and lost business opportunities.

The Agency needed a way to improve the accuracy of its mailings while controlling expenses.

The Challenge

The Agency understood that personalized mail (addressed to a specific recipient) generated the highest response rates. However, ensuring accuracy in naming and addressing was a complex task. The Agency was already using NCOALink® to update addresses but still experienced high rates of undelivered mail because many movers did not file a Change of Address (COA) with USPS®. Additionally, issues like missing apartment numbers, incorrect data entry, and unreported life events (such as divorce or death) were causing inaccuracies in their database.

Complicating matters further, approximately 40 million Americans move every year, and undeliverable mail increases costs while reducing return on investment (ROI). The Agency needed a more comprehensive solution to identify and eliminate problematic addresses without sacrificing delivery rates.

The Approach

To enhance the quality of its mailing list, the Agency partnered with GrayHair Software, a leader in business mail management solutions. GrayHair analyzed the Agency’s mailings and found that 6 to 10 percent of their mailing costs resulted from undeliverable as addressed (UAA) mail—well above industry standards.

GrayHair implemented its Address Hygiene Solution, which combined data from USPS ACS™ with existing tools like CASS™ and NCOALink® to maximize address accuracy. GrayHair’s postal optimization approach allowed the Agency to:

• Update addresses undetectable via NCOALink® to ensure delivery to the correct recipient.
• Identify temporary movers and suppress mail until residents return.
• Access and suppress undeliverable addresses (Nixie records) from future mailings.
• Reduce paper waste, energy consumption, and carbon output.
• Eliminate physical mail returns by leveraging electronic data, reducing costs and improving accuracy.

The Results

GrayHair significantly improved the Agency’s mailing list quality. The Agency achieved a 4% Nixie hit rate and a 1.5 percent COA hit rate, far exceeding expectations. By processing 100 million records and applying COA and Nixie data, GrayHair’s solution led to $2,227,500 in savings.

With fewer returned mail pieces, the Agency reduced operational costs, increased response rates, and ensured that mail pieces reached the intended recipients. Most importantly, these improvements positioned the Agency to capitalize on business opportunities and drive revenue growth.