Most publishers think about bad addresses when copies come back. By then you've already paid for them. The cheaper place to deal with an address is the moment it arrives, and the tool most of the UK uses for that is Royal Mail's Postcode Address File, or PAF.
This is a practical look at what PAF is, what Royal Mail expects from anyone sending mail in bulk, and how to keep the addresses on a subscriber file in decent shape without turning it into a project.
What PAF is
PAF is Royal Mail's database of every address it delivers to. According to Royal Mail's PAF site, it holds around 32 million UK delivery addresses, 1.8 million postcodes and 1.4 million business names. It's kept current with around 2,500 to 3,000 updates every day, mainly from postal workers on their rounds.
You've almost certainly used it without knowing. When you type a postcode into a website and pick your address from a list, that list usually comes from PAF. Address lookup tools, data cleansing services and plenty of mailing houses are licensed to use it.
If you want to use PAF data directly in your own systems, you need a licence, either from Royal Mail or through a licensed provider. Most smaller publishers use it through a supplier rather than holding the file themselves.
Why Royal Mail cares about your addresses
Bulk magazine mailings go through Royal Mail's machines, and machines are fussy. The cheaper rates rely on mail that can be read and sorted automatically, and an address that doesn't match what Royal Mail expects slows that down.
So there's a standard. Royal Mail Wholesale's addressing guidance says customers must make sure "at least 90% of items are fully and accurately addressed and postcoded", measured against PAF. Some services ask for more: its Premium service needs 95%.
If you post through a mailing house, it's usually their contract with Royal Mail, but it's your data. A file that drags their accuracy down is a problem for both of you, and it's worth asking your mailing house how your files measure up.
What "accurate" looks like
Royal Mail's own clear addressing tips are short and worth a read. The headlines for a UK address:
- The postcode goes in capitals, on the last line.
- The post town goes in capitals.
- You don't need the county.
- Lines are left-aligned, with no commas or full stops.
For a subscriber file, that translates into a few rules about how addresses are stored, not just how they're printed:
- The postcode has its own field. Not tacked onto the end of a town, not in "address line 3".
- The post town has its own field too. That lets your mailing file print it the way Royal Mail wants it.
- The company name is a separate field. In B2B this matters a lot, because PAF holds business names and a matching company line helps the address resolve.
- No duplicated lines. "Unit 4, Unit 4 Riverside Park" happens more often than you'd think, usually after an import.
Where bad addresses come from
The usual suspects are much the same on any subscriber file.
Free-text web forms. If a reader can type anything into five boxes, they will. Postcodes without spaces, towns in the postcode field, the whole address squashed into line one.
Event and list imports. A spreadsheet from a show, keyed by someone in a hurry, merged straight into the file.
Phone orders. Spelling a street name down the phone is a game of chance.
Time. Addresses that were right when they arrived go stale. Offices move, buildings get renamed, new developments get new postcodes. PAF changes every day. Your file doesn't, unless you check it.
Job moves. In B2B, this is the big one, and it's a different problem. The address is still perfectly valid. The reader just isn't there. No amount of PAF matching will tell you that, which is why the gone-aways routine matters as much as address cleansing.
A simple routine
1. Validate at the door
Use a postcode lookup on your web forms, and in whatever screen your team uses to key phone and post orders. Picking an address from a list beats typing it, every time. It's one of the easiest improvements to make, and it stops most of the mess before it starts.
2. Check imports before they go in
Every event list, agency file and spreadsheet should be checked against PAF (or at least for valid postcodes and complete lines) before it touches the subscriber file. Fixing 500 records in a spreadsheet is easy. Finding them again once they're mixed in with 20,000 others isn't.
3. Clean the whole file now and then
Even with good entry, a file drifts. A periodic full clean against PAF corrects postcodes, fills in missing lines and flags addresses that no longer exist. Once a year is a reasonable rhythm for most titles, and it's worth doing before an audit period ends or a big renewal campaign.
4. Think about movers, carefully
Royal Mail's redirection data is sold, through licensed providers, as change-of-address and gone-away suppression services. They're built on people who redirect their post when they move home, so they're most useful for consumer titles mailed to home addresses. For B2B titles mailed to work, they'll help less.
5. Keep the history
When an address is corrected, keep a note of what it was and when it changed. Your auditor may want to see it, and so might the reader if they ask what you hold on them. UK GDPR expects personal data to be accurate and kept up to date, and a clean, well-documented address history is a good way to show you take that seriously.
6. Check before every mailing file
Run a quick scan for invalid postcodes and missing lines before each issue's file goes to the mailing house. It should take minutes. It's the last chance to catch a problem before you pay to post it.
What it's worth
Royal Mail magazine subscription prices go up by around 9% on average in January, as we covered in our piece on the postage rise. Every copy that goes to an address that doesn't work is costing a bit more than it did.
If you want to put a number on it, our free gone-away cost calculator works out what copies to bad addresses cost you each year in print and postage. It's rarely a comfortable figure, and it doesn't count the advertiser who wonders why response is poor.
Where we fit in
In Avio, our subscription platform for larger publishers, data quality scans pick up bad UK postcodes, missing address lines, stray spaces and duplicates, and AutoClean fixes what it can.
If you'd rather someone else did it, our team does one-off data cleaning, and you don't need to be a software or bureau client. Every change is reviewed by a person and logged.
If your mailing file could do with a tidy before the January price rise, get in touch.
Rob Sherwood is Managing Director of Adept Data Services. He has spent his career in subscriptions and circulation, at WDIS, Optima and CDS Global before founding Adept.