Royal Mail product helps charities keep track business address changes
Howard Lake | 20 January 2004 | News
According to the Royal Mail, UK businesses, including charities, wasted £163 million in 2002 because of incorrectly addressed letters to other businesses.
The Royal Mail says that 69% of all business letters have one or more errors due to poor data: they were either incorrectly addressed or the company had moved office. A total of 172 million items of mail were sent to businesses that had moved or ceased to trade.
The need to keep supporter data, whether corporate or individual, up to date should be well-engrained in most fundraising and supporter services departments by now. Yet achieving that target is becoming more difficult. The latest research from the Royal Mail Business Changes File shows just how frequently such changes occur. For example:
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- a company name change occurs every minute
- a Chief Executive changes every minute
- a business closes every minute
- a business fails every four minutes
- a business moves office every six minutes
In all, 5.7 million business details change each year.
Royal Mail has launched a new database product for charities and businesses that is designed to help address these pressures and issues. It tracks, monitors and updates changes to businesses each month.
The Royal Mail Business Changes File ™, developed in association with D & B, enables organisations not only to keep track of present customers, but to identify new leads of businesses that have just started or have just moved. This should prove useful for charities both hoping to keep track of existing and looking for new potential donors.
The new product uses data from the Royal Mail business movers list, together with D & B listings for businesses that are no longer trading and for new businesses, and data on new phone line connections.
Richard Roche, Head of Business Development at Royal Mail, said: “Royal Mail is in a unique position to help charities of any size achieve more from their post. It seems incredible that so many fail to accurately target donor addresses. I am sure the Royal Mail Business Changes File ™, a new addition to our comprehensive range of data services, will provide them with access to greater and more accurate data.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.