DAM has purchased FASTForward and is currently on line with the postal national change of address service (COA) in Memphis TN. The FASTForward service checks for movers within the past 13 months, where NCOA goes back three years. Otherwise, they produce essentially the same results.

NCOA is usually charged on a per record basis based on the entire list. Most purchased lists have between 4% and 8% delivery errors. List providers understand that lists are not 100% accurate. As a result, the industry standard for any compensation (for name costs only) is anything over a 10% error factor. These address errors are returned to the customers on first class mailings. The FASTForward process catches a good portion of the list errors, but for a variety of reasons, not all changes are reported to the post office and there will always be a percentage of returns in any mailing. Our goal is to try to keep the number under 4%. Most list brokers do not have an incentive to go this extra step. They clean their list every month or so, charge on a per name basis, and only guarantee a 90% deliverable rate, which is the legal industry standard.

When mailing to people, the address may exist but the person may not be there. The benefit of this new service is that we can look at the lists we get in and update the records in real time by person and/or by company. We have the ability to insure our mailers a more deliverable list, and save them significant postage dollars. This is especially valuable for Standard Class mailers. The records that do not CASS certify, or where people have moved, will not be delivered. It is a waste of money for the customer to mail to “bad” addresses.

When we maintain a customer’s list, we normally FASTForward and provide them with the changes in their house files. When we do a first class mailing, we offer to have the customer send back the returns and we will keep the list up to date for them. Every piece is key coded by DAM so that if the customer wants a clean list, we will take out the records that Fastforward may not catch. They must return the entire piece, and the price for this service is only $.05 a record. The net saving, after expenses, is about $200/m on a first class mailing and half of that for a standard class piece. Our overall goal is a 98% accurate list.

This added value benefit to any production company should not only help secure the customer’s continued patronage, but also provide an additional form of income on the mailing. The printer loses the per/m charge on the personalization, but should be able to charge $.10 each for records identified and removed. This is a sticking point when you are also buying the list, but the customer may also be able to request consideration from the list broker.

All DAM mailers now have the advantage to have their lists checked and updated quickly and economically. We guarantee you will always show an overall savings for any costs charged. This should be a Win – Win scenario. Few, if any, companies offer this type of specialized list service to the smaller mailer.