Don't let undeliverable mail ruin your customer relationships

Most of us will readily acknowledge the logic behind making customer retention a priority. Statistics drive the point home: according to Forrester Research, the cost to acquire a new customer is 5 times higher than the cost to retain an existing customer¹. Furthermore, improving customer retention rates by a mere 5% boosts profits by anywhere from 25% to 95%².

Unfortunately, no matter how hard you work to keep existing customers happy, there are always some aspects of doing business that have the potential to negatively impact your customer relationships. One of these negative impacts is undeliverable mail.

Consider that up to 18% of the U.S. population moves every year, but only 60% of those people register their forwarding address with the U.S. Postal Service³. In 2016 this helped contribute to 6.8 billion pieces of mail being returned to sender, almost 5% of the outbound mail volume⁴.

As much as we'd like to think otherwise, among that sea of lost documents and packages are probably some important communications: customer incentives, thank you notes, invoices, etc. — all of which cause a temporary (or permanent if a correct address for the recipient is never found) break in customer touchpoints. As a result, these missed connections can eventually lead to a dissatisfied or lost customer.