Royal Mail is ‘pushing the envelope’ with the trial of a new mailing technique that allows brands to continue sending acquisition mail in a GDPR-compliant way.

Partially Addressed Mail is a standard addressed advertising mail product that identifies customers using sophisticated targeting options without the use of personalised data.

Mailing items are addressed to the household, rather than to an individual prospective customer. This enables customer acquisition without the use of personal data about recipients, by targeting households using geo-demographics at postcode level.

For a lot of charities cold DM was a key acquisition tool pre-GDPR. However, many have had to take cold DM out of the media mix for organisational compliance reasons. Partially Addressed Mail is a good alternative to door drops for those charities given its enhanced customer targeting options.

The key benefits:

• Partially Addressed is roughly 165 times more targeted than door drop, according to Royal Mail
• Existing supporters are removed, so no budget is wasted marketing to existing supporters
• There are limited creative set-up costs as existing direct mail or door drop creative can be used
• Postage costs are lower for the Partially Addressed Mail service than the Advertising Mail service
• Significantly reduced data costs as there’s no need to purchase personal data
• Estimated 30% greater reach than a personalised, cold list mailing

How does it work?

There are 3 different targeting methods available:

1. Topping up

With this model, your own data is used to identify postcodes with a high proportion of existing supporters and the remainder of the postcode can be ‘topped up’ with a prospect variant.

2. Look-a-likes

This method works similarly to door drop targeting but at a more granular postcode level. Current over-represented postcodes are located and segmentation is used to identify postcodes with similar characteristics. Existing households in these ‘look-a-like’ postcodes can be excluded.

3. Household targeting

With the household targeting model additional publicly available household or property data (e.g. council tax band) is required to allow for specific targeting. Acquisition mail is replicated as closely as possible using this data.

Using a combination of all 3 models is recommended for the most effective targeting and greatest coverage of potential supporters.

Partially Addressed is currently being offered on a 12-month trial basis, commencing 8 November 2018.

Medialab Group is one of the selected partners working with Royal Mail to trial this product. If you’d like to know more about how we can help improve your customer acquisition with Partially Addressed Mail get in touch with James on James.Taylor@medialabgroup.co.uk.