Save Yourself Major Mailing Headaches in February

January is a busy time for print/mail service providers and in-plant document operations. Print and mail volumes typically jump this month because of year-end tax forms like 1099’s, 1098’s, and W-2’s. Many organizations also send annual statements and correspondence that do not occur throughout the year. Examples include final statements for closed accounts, annual benefit statements, earnings recaps, and policy notice updates.

The trouble with this increased volume is you may not have  mailed to many of the extra addresses for some time. If your organization relies on a post-mailing method of address correction like the US Postal Service’s Address Correction Service (ACS), a good percentage of those infrequently contacted entities may bear undeliverable addresses.

After mailing to these addresses in January, you or your clients may face a deluge of Undeliverable as Addressed (UAA) mailpieces or electronic address corrections. Processing the returned mail and re-mailing the documents will add to February’s workload.

See our blog post “Why So Much UAA Mail?”
for more information about the challenges of returned mail.

The best defense against a February surge in undeliverable mail is cleansing your database before mailing the year-end documents in January. Use postal processing software like Firstlogic’s ACE^® to correct addresses for street names or zip codes the USPS changed since you last mailed to them. Then run the file through Firstlogic’s new Mover IQ™ 6.5 software to find and update the addresses of individuals and businesses that have moved.

Dealing with returned mail will always be part of the mailing business, but taking steps in January to update all the addresses will limit the impact of returns and re-mailing of your year-end campaigns.

Another reason for updating addresses before mailing in January is the effect of bad addresses on your Mailer Scorecard. As you know, failing to update records for mail recipients who filed change-of-address notices with the USPS can cause expensive postage penalties. Your organization may face a sudden unexpected postage bill. Should you mount a defense against an unfair assessment, the effort will pull your staff away from their regular duties to perform research and prepare arguments – another unexpected expense.

With undelivered tax forms, company resources may also be burdened with responding to inquiries from employees, account-holders, or vendors about missing documents. Legal obligations may force organizations to produce replacement documents and mail them separately – a process that racks up costs for labor, materials, and postage.

Take action now to make sure you’ll be mailing year-end documents to deliverable addresses. You’ll thank yourself in February.