Less than 10% of direct mail is relevant to recipients

Fewer than one in 10 pieces of direct mail are relevant to the people who receive them, new research has found.

The survey reveals that 47% of direct mail that is sent to post boxes is addressed incorrectly.

Data firm Informatica has undertaken the study to highlight the attention of inaccurate data being used in UK direct marketing campaigns.

It blames poorly-used data for contributing to the 78,000 tonnes of landfill waste each year caused by unaddressed junk mail.

Other findings were that 40% of respondents received more than five pieces of direct mail a week and a quarter of people said that less than 1% of all the direct marketing they received was relevant to them.

Tom Golden, vice-president of marketing for Informatica’s data quality division, said: “Dirty data is a huge problem for the UK’s direct marketing industry and data quality has to be paramount.

“Companies, at the very least, need to get name and address details correct or potentially alienate consumers, flying in the face of their objective to attract people to their brand.

“What’s worse for companies is that inaccurate data produces irrelevant mail that winds up straight in the bin, and equates to an immediate loss of a much-needed marketing budget.”