Survey Reveals Untapped Business Opportunities in Mailing Process Automation
January 04 2010 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
Pitney Bowes Business Insight, the leading global provider of
location and communication intelligence solutions, today released
the results of its mailing address quality survey. The survey
findings, consisting of responses from major high-volume mailers,
revealed that while companies are concerned with address quality,
many are not yet prepared to receive the cost-saving benefits
related to USPS rate changes for the proper management of returned
mail and address updates.
The survey, conducted by Pitney Bowes Business Insight,
evaluated how companies are managing address updates and returned
mail. The USPS® Move Update Standard aims to reduce the volume of
undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) mail, which according to the USPS,
costs about $1.6 billion to process. The latest standards became
effective November 23, 2008, requiring businesses to update their
bulk-mailing lists for both First-Class Mail® and Standard Mail®
within 95 days of the mailing date. Effective January 4, 2010,
companies whose mailings are not compliant will be subject to an
additional postage of $0.07 per assessed piece.
Key survey findings include:
- Sixty-four percent of
respondents said they use the National Change of Address
(NCOALink®) method to identify address changes to help reduce
undeliverable mailpieces before they enter the mailstream;
- Fifty-four percent rely on
Address Change Service (ACS™) to ensure that the new address
information is returned to the mailer. However, only about half of
the companies surveyed reported that they thoroughly analyze the
ACS™ notices received, potentially missing out on key information
about the UAA mailpieces;
- When mail is returned from
NCOALink® or ACS™ due to incorrect addressing, 33 percent said they
rely on manually updating the addresses, the most costly method.
Only slightly more respondents (39 percent) say they have an
automated process to deal with returned mail from NCOALink® or
ACS™;
- Forty-six percent of respondents
consider handling return mail a manually intensive process and 22
percent believe that having multiple databases requiring updates is
also a key constraint;
- When it comes to updating
addresses in environments that include customer consent as
requirements (by legal or business rules), respondents primarily
relied on sending consent letters (22 percent) or e-mail
confirmations for verification. Of note, the 22 percent of
respondents who selected “other” methods for updating addresses,
suspect that they do not have an adequate process in place and some
rely on their clients to make the updates; and
- For Move Update processing,
about half of the respondents indicated they use an “on premise”
solution rather than a hosted or Software as a Service (SaaS)
offering.
“The results of the Pitney Bowes Business Insight survey
indicate that mailers have the opportunity to enhance their best
practices for updating address changes, but many have not yet made
the investment,” said Matt McPartlin, director of product
management, Pitney Bowes Business Insight. “With the upcoming
changes to postal rate structures in the Move Update Standard,
mailers that take steps to improve their address database
management today will benefit from greater cost-savings and better
overall customer communications in the long run.”
The survey conducted exclusively by Pitney Bowes Business
Insight queried more than 50 North American executives and IT
managers who conduct high-volume mailings in industries including
insurance, financial services, communications or utilities,
government, service bureaus and others.
For complete survey results please contact Anna Dreyser or Jenny
Ng at PBBI@schwartz-pr.com.
About Pitney Bowes Business Insight
Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI), a division of Pitney Bowes
Software Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes Inc.,
provides a unique combination of location and communication
intelligence software, data and services that enable organizations
to make more informed decisions about customers, competition and
market expansion. With the industry’s most comprehensive set of
solutions for maximizing the value of customer data, PBBI provides
the tools required to more effectively locate, connect and
communicate with customers in today’s global markets. Leading
organizations rely on PBBI solutions to increase the accuracy and
effectiveness of customer information delivery and drive profitable
growth. Visit www.pbbusinessinsight.com and www.pb.com for more
information.
USPS, First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, NCOALink and ACS are
trademarks owned by the United States Postal Service.
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