¿Is the gender of all your clients registered? That is fundamental if you are to make personalized mailings. You can’t address all your letters “Dear Sir.” Women will react badly. Further, not all products are of interest to both sexes. Is your product a racing car magazine, Cosmetics, Fashion, etc?

Are all your addresses complete? It’s common when sales are made to consumers over the counter not to complete all the data. These have to be completed or eliminated.

Are all the fields complete, including city and province? You need those to apply Postal Codes.

And are your postal codes complete and verified against the new coding system? If you send a letter without a postal code, it will probably end up in the right place. But have you considered what willed happen if you send 100.000 letters with 20% incorrect or incomplete postal code? 20.000 letters will go adrift, at the mercy of the mail service. Further, to negotiate special mailing rates, the postal systems will require that the mailing be delivered to them pre-classified by Postal Codes.

Remember that the new postal code system is in effect. It has eight digits instead of four. You must modify your present systems to the new codes. And, of course, city and street names must also be standardized and correct. Otherwise you will have to find the new postal codes manually, one by one.

If you are planning a TeleMarketing or Direct mail and TeleMarketing campaign, you have to exclude all the registers that do not have telephones or do not have up dated numbers.

To give you an idea, if you want to make telephone calls using the latest telephone book, the percentage of incorrect numbers resulting from changes in telephone exchanges, inclusions and exclusions will be about 20%. How old is your telephone list? Keep in mind that even if you use other Direct mail alternatives, the telephone is still essential to audit the distribution of the letters or catalogs or to monitor aspects of your campaign.

Does your list include names that appear to be different but, in fact, are the same?. If there are, it is fundamental to eliminate them. Not doing so affects your image and your pocket. If your list has the name and surname in the same field, you must separate them into surname, first name, second name. If your list is of companies, you must standardize the names and type of company.