A new way to reach customers post-GDPR
Have you heard about Partially Addressed Mail? It’s a new mail service from Royal Mail, designed for businesses who wish to prospect new customers.
The service occupies a middle ground between door drops and fully addressed mail. This gives businesses more choice to reach prospects. It enables targeted mailings without the use of personal data, by targeting households using geo-demographics at postcode level.
Addressed mail remains a highly effective way to reach customers post-GDPR. However, this service offers cost benefits when targeting cold prospects.
How does it work?
Instead of addressing direct mail to an individual, the item will be addressed to the household, or to a campaign-specific name. This enables customer acquisition without the use of personal data.
Partially addressed data is targeted at postcode level (c.15 households) and uses existing customer postcodes to target other houses in customer ‘rich’ postcodes. It also uses targeting software to identify similar customer postcodes using geo-demographic profiling.
- ‘Top-Up’ data enables you to identify new prospects in areas where there’s a high proportion of existing customers. This gives you greater reach in areas where your service is already being used.
- ‘Look-a-like’ audiences can be identified using tools which identify postcodes with similar characteristics to existing customers. This helps you find customers in new areas, but who are likely to be interested in your service.
Combining both methods could give you 30% more reach than fully addressed mail; if you need to acquire mailing data. It will also significantly reduce data costs in this instance.
How does it differ to addressed mail?
- Lower postage costs
- Reduced data costs
- 30% more reach
This service is a trial, running to November 2019. Response rates are unproven but are estimated to be slightly less than addressed mail and slightly more than door drops.
For this reason, Partially Addressed Mail will have lower postage costs. Therefore, the prices are lower than the Advertising Mail service, at 4p per item less for letters and 2p per item less for large letters.
As you don’t need to purchase personal data, you can expect to save 5-10p per item on data costs. In addition, for the same spend, you can reach 30% more households than with a personalised cold list.
There is a minimum requirement of 10,000 items per mailing, removing personal addresses, existing customers and suppressed customers.
| Fully Addressed | Partially Addressed | Door Drops | |
| Best for | Customers, lapsed customers, qualified prospects | Cold prospects | Cold prospects |
| Addressee | To name | Campaign-specific, e.g. Holiday Lover | To household |
| Targeting | Highly targeted | Geo-demographic profiling – ‘Top Up’ & ‘Look-alike’ audiences | Location-based |
| GDPR compliant | √ | √ | √ |
| Mailing size | As required | Min 10k items | High volume |
Benefits of Partially Addressed Mail
Partially Addressed Mail is an innovative new option which enables acquisition mailings to continue. It’s GDPR compliant, giving you more targeting options and more choice in how to allocate campaign budget.
In summary, Partially Addressed Mail:
- Uses no personal data about the recipient
- Targeted to c15 households
- Combines ‘top-up’ and ‘look-alike’ targeting
- Addressable and campaign specific, e.g. to Valued Customer
- x165 more targeted than door drop
- Cheaper than cold mailing
- Increases brand awareness
Please Contact Us to understand how Partially Addressed Mail could complement your mailing strategy. We will monitor insight and performance and keep you informed on the development of this new approach.
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