Starting Over. It’s more than a TV show or a John Lennon song. No one likes to begin something again- but we’ve found that starting over can be a beneficial thing for your customers. I’m talking to all of you who run radii for your clients- Especially those of you that copy and paste or upload the old geo-codes into the new count. You may find over time that you are missing addresses and have big holes in your mailing areas.

In the infinite wisdom of the USPS – they make route changes and send those out to the CDS holders weekly. They will add a few addresses to this route- take a few from that one, and re-configure route boundaries in an effort to become more efficient at delivering our mail.

The result of all of this USPS activity is that Compact’s weekly change file for the country is around 40-50 million addresses. If one address in the route changes- then the entire route has to be updated. You will find all of these changes listed by ZIP Code and route on the Compact Resident List site under Route Query. The date of the change is also listed. This is the same place you go when your client calls and says- “I had 358 people in CR003- where did they go?”

When you run a radius- it will incorporate all of the routes within the given Geo.

When you copy and paste old Geography into a fresh count- you may begin receiving 0 counts in some of your routes due to the movement of addresses or the deletion of a Route in its entirety. A zero should be an indicator that some kind of change has taken place. Depending on the size of the radius in question you could be missing significant market areas.

It’s really easy to re-run your radii – the starting address is still in the original count. So, instead of starting a new count and then copying and pasting – (clone the old order if you have to have the old original count) all you have to do is click a tab on the pop up window.

The job you are wanting to update (T000857004) is a radius job. Do you want to:
( ) Keep the existing geography
(X) Re-run the radius (any routes added manually will be lost)

By clicking the re-run the radius button you will automatically get the new Geo.

Should you and your customer email Geo files back and forth- it’s a good practice to run radii from their origination point quarterly and create new Geo files.

So rather than thinking starting over is a bad thing- keep your customers happy and sales on track- and re-run your radii!

Chris Slauter
Compact Information Systems

One of the requests I get almost every day is to explain the difference between what is commonly called a “Consumer” list and a “Resident” list.  Both terms sound similar,  the same addresses may actually appear on each list, but there can be quite a bit of confusion over the list types and when each list should be used.  Here is a quick breakdown:

So… when should you use a Consumer List versus a Resident List?

Use a Consumer List if:

-You want a household name on every record in your list

-You require that certain demographic criteria have been confirmed on the household level such as age, income or presence of children

-Importance of targeting your list outweighs the importance of postal discounts

-Importance of targeting your list outweighs chance of slightly lower deliverability

-You are mailing first class and/or don’t mind that the file will need additional presort processing to achieve automation discounts.

-You need a list that includes phone numbers for telemarketing purposes

Consumer List Example: A luxury car dealership has a specific demographic profile for households who are likely to buy their cars: Age 40+ with a $100,000+ income within 25 miles of the dealership.  They also want the mailing to appear as personalized as possible, so showing household name on each piece is important.

Use a Resident List if:

-You want the highest possible postage discounts for sortation and saturation

-You want to make sure you blanket or “saturate” a geographic area by mailing to every available address

-Importance of postal discounts outweighs the importance of targeting your list

-Importance of highest possible deliverability outweighs the slightly lower deliverability of a targeted list

-You want a list that is already properly sorted and ready for mailing including appropriate postal paperwork

Resident List Example: A local pizza parlor knows that most households within 2 miles of their store will consume at least one pizza every 2 weeks. Using the Resident List they will saturate every address in the neighborhood with a coupon mailing.

Contact us for any other questions you may have on the details of the different list types!

Mary McCarty

List Services Manager