BCC Customer Helps American Red Cross Reach More Donors with ARS

BCC's Address Resolution Service significantly improved the non-profit's donor communications channel, with big savings on upfront costs

A longtime BCC customer who also happens to be a dedicated volunteer for the American Red Cross recently used one contact to help the other. Thanks to an exclusive BCC Data Services offering – DPV®-enhancing Address Resolution Service (ARS) – the customer was able to assist the Red Cross in improving its donor communications channel, while saving significantly on upfront costs.

ARS uses third-party data to correct addresses deemed undeliverable during the DPV component of the CASS Certified™ encoding process. Ellie Alexander, Newkirk Corporate Vice President, recommended the service to the American Red Cross of Northeastern New York, after that organization acknowledged it had been losing touch with donors and wasting money on production costs by sending campaigns to addresses that didn't exist.

"The first step is to recognize there is a problem," Alexander says. "Unless you have something like ARS to help you with the problem, you [won't] have the ZIP + 4® addresses to send through NCOA^Link®."

Additionally, Alexander notes, "until the addresses have been successfully cleaned through ARS, you not only can't take advantage of barcoded discounts, but you can't even use NCOA^Link to update changed addresses."

As the USPS® continues reviewing and consolidating delivery routes, the number of delivery points continues to increase (it rose by 400,000 in 2008) and mailers can no longer rely on carriers to track down mail recipients. The Red Cross recognized this trend through decreasing response rates, and decided to test different solutions. After running lists through USPS Address Element Correction (AEC) and AEC II® and then comparing the results to those yielded by BCC's Address Resolution Service, the choice between the two processes was clear.

"Very few addresses were found [by AEC and AEC II] that had not already been found by ARS," Alexander says. "AEC and AEC II take a long time to go through, and ARS made these a moot point."

The Red Cross applied the address corrections from BCC's ARS and NCOA^Link services (for Move Update compliance), and now estimate they will see a 34 percent increase in ROI: Almost $10,000 was saved in otherwise wasted mailing costs, and $6,800 generated in new donor revenue, for a difference of almost $17,000.