Today, the Royal Mail’s new stamp price increase comes into effect. To help businesses counteract these rises Capscan, a leading provider of international address management solutions and data integrity services, has compiled a simple five point plan to help businesses reduce their mailing costs. From Monday 4th April 2011, Royal Mail’s new postage prices are as follows:

•    First class stamp up 5p to 46p.
•    Second class stamp up 4p to 36p.
•    First class large letter stamp up 9p to 75p.
•    First class franked mail up 3p to 39p.
•    Second class mail up 3p to 28p.

Managing Director of Capscan, Terry Hiles, outlines the impact of these price rises for UK businesses: “The cost of mailing 100,000 standard first class items will rise by £3,000 to £39,000. However, most businesses can counteract the impact of these hikes by taking greater control of their address database and trimming the unnecessary fat.”

Capscan’s five point plan to reduce business mailing costs

1. Address business mail clearly and correctly – Cleanse the database against the Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File (PAF) – a database containing all known UK addresses and postcodes – to update incorrect address information. There are many address management products, such as Matchcode, that can simplify and speed up this entire process.
2. Remove duplicates and out-of-date addresses – A database that is not maintained will decay over time. Keep records up-to-date by running the database through lists such as the changes of address and mortality register.
3. Personalise the envelope – Ensure the name is present and accurately spelt. Failure to do so may mean it reaches the correct location, but not the correct destination.
4. Pay the correct postage – Ensure each item to be mailed is given the correct postage in accordance with the Royal Mail’s sizing requirements.
5. Pre-sort mail – Use technology such as Sortcode to take maximum advantage of the discounts available by using Royal Mail’s Mailsort and Walksort schemes. This alone can deliver saving of over £6,000 on a 100,000 item mailing.

Hiles adds: “A ‘dirty’ database of 100,000 contacts could realistically expect to have as many as 15,000 duplicates. So for a mailing that costs £1 per item to create and send, the use of low-cost de-duplication software would immediately save the organisation £15,000.”

Capscan provides a wide range of products and services that help businesses to improve the quality of their customer and prospect data, to improve the success of mailings and reduce unnecessary costs. The company recently published a whitepaper entitled: ‘The Hidden Returns on Your Data Quality Investment’ and is available for download from: www.capscan.com/white_papers.aspx.

For more advice from Capscan follow the company on Twitter: @CapscanLimited