Businesses that send mail to people who have died miss out on £328.4million in unrealised potential revenue, a new study by data specialists Wilmington Millennium Mortascreen reports. This equates to £1.64 per piece of mistargeted direct mail.
The research revealed that two-thirds (66 per cent) of consumers would boycott an organisation that sent direct mail to a loved one who was deceased.
The nationally representative survey showed that 20 per cent of UK adults have received direct mail intended for a family member who has passed away in the last year. On average they received 15 pieces of direct mail addressed to deceased (three pieces of mail per month for five months following the intended recipient’s death). However, 1.6 million people (2.5 per cent) received five or six pieces per month and five per cent continued receiving the mail for more than a year. This equates to almost 200 million pieces (193.2 million) of mistargeted direct mail or five per cent of all direct mail sent (approximately 3.6 billion pieces per year).
The price of sending direct mail to deceased
The cost of this brand damage is only calculated for the period of time that the direct mail is sent to the deceased, so could be significantly higher if the person continued to boycott the brand in the future. Furthermore, it does not take into consideration the wasted cost of producing and sending the direct mail which equates to around £154.5 million.
Karen Pritchard (pictured), product director of Mortascreen, a Wilmington Millennium product, said: “2016 has seen the highest rate of deaths in memory and, as a result, customer databases are decaying more quickly than usual.
“With an expected 33,000 extra deaths this year, organisations can ill-afford to ignore this research.
“The fact that two-thirds of consumers would blacklist them if they mailed someone who had passed away is significant. Consumers are becoming increasingly empowered and will vote with their feet by closing their wallets.
“As an industry, we have always understood that mailing the deceased causes brand damage. However, this research, for the first time, serves to emphasise the scale of the problem for UK companies. While the headline figure is unrealised potential revenue, in absolute terms the £154million wasted on producing these mail packs should serve as momentum to keep customer data as up-to-date as possible.”