As a direct marketer, it is your corporate and social responsibility to suppress deceased records from your mailing or contact list. Not only is it ethical and socially sensitive, it also actually makes good business sense.
Deceased suppression removes records that you KNOW will be unresponsive. You will not only save on mailing costs (and therefore realize a higher return on investment), you can also reduce your list rental costs as deceased suppressions are considered acceptable drops. Further, the cost of the suppression will be much less than the savings you will realize on your reduces mailing costs.
If the direct savings are not enough to convince you, think about the potential damage that mailing to these deceased could have to your company’s reputation. At a minimum, you will not be getting a sale from these recipients. Worse, you will likely receive complaints from the deceased’s family and demands to remove the deceased from your mailing lists. At worst, irate family members could actively campaign against your company on social networks.
All businesses should consider running their customer database against the appropriate country master deceased suppression files, and do this on a regular basis as part of their database maintenance. Ask your service bureau for more details on their data cleansing services, or talk to our data experts at JR Direct to learn more about our Data Hygiene services.
