Alan Brown’s mail house in the Midwest is dedicated to executing innovative, targeted mailing campaigns. For over twenty years, his company has satisfied the needs of its clients through use of extensive capabilities in data processing, database management, list sourcing and acquisition, automatic address change updating, postal presorting, laser imaging, ink-jet addressing, standard and oversize inserting, folding, cutting, and tabbing. The company supports its clients from the simplest post card addressing project to the integration of multiple data requirements to successfully roll out very complex ongoing programs.
WHEN PRECISION IS MANDATED
Imprecision is often considered a byproduct of saturation mailings, justified by significant postage cost savings. So when Brown, was contacted by the management for regional nuclear power initiatives to orchestrate a mailing to only and exactly the residents within a 10-mile emergency planning zone of each of two nuclear power plants, while still qualifying for carrier-route-based postage discounts wherever possible, he had to put on his thinking cap.
Brown was contacted precisely because the mail house hired previously had “provided an incomplete job,” Brown’s client explained. Typically carrier route maps were purchased based on a 10-mile radius around an address. This process selected who to mail to by whether or not the carrier route centroid (the center point of the carrier route boundary polygon) fell inside or outside of the 10 mile radius ring. Thus if the centroid were inside, the whole carrier route received the mailing, and if outside, all addresses within the carrier route were excluded, even if some of those residents actually live within a 10-mile radius. Manually splitting carrier routes to try to accommodate this flaw was a time-consuming and inexact process.
Brown’s client explained to him that “Since explicit regulations stipulate that any resident within the 10 mile emergency planning zone of a nuclear power plant must be notified of emergency planning procedures, even one person not having received appropriate notification could cause a regulatory problem. Likewise, the company did not want any more people than required to receive the mailing in order to avoid customer-service issues that would result from sending potentially confusing information to people not affected by the regulations.”
GEOCODING AND MAPPING PROVIDE THE SOLUTION
Brown knew his ability to provide the most accuracy possible was essential for winning this client, and as such he searched for a mapping partner that could meet their stringent requirements. After interviewing several, he selected Maponics. “I liked the fact Maponics updated its data monthly and my salesperson quickly understood my needs and had a way to meet them” he explains.
Maponics offered Brown the following solutions:
- A nameless resident occupant address list for each 10-mile radius territory, to which latitude and longitude were appended. Using this information, it was possible to determine with relative precision which addresses were inside or outside of the territory.
- For addresses associated with a PO Box, Maponics used the Post Office location when determining whether addresses were inside or outside the territories.
- Carrier route codes were appended to the address lists, and a spreadsheet generated for each territory listing the carrier routes that should qualify for saturation mailing.
- Two maps showing radius rings, water, local streets, major roads and highways.
“I thought Maponics’ rates were very reasonable. My client was very happy with this mailing, as opposed to the previous one – and they loved their maps. In fact, they are already planning future projects involving this mapping/mailing technique.”
Energy Company Achieves More Accurate Mailings
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