Every print title sends some copies to people who aren't there any more. It's rarely a disaster on one issue, which is exactly why it gets left. Over a year, it adds up to real money spent printing and posting magazines straight into the bin.
Wasted a year
Copies to bad addresses a year
Per issue
- Halving the bad-address rate would save about a year.
- Every 1 point off the rate is worth about a year.
How the sum works
It's deliberately simple: copies per issue, times issues a year, times the share going to bad addresses, gives the wasted copies. Multiply that by what each copy costs you to print, pack and post and you have the yearly cost.
The two figures most people have to estimate are the bad address rate and the cost per copy. For cost per copy, include paper and print, polywrap or envelope, the mailing house's handling charge, and postage. If you sell overseas, work out UK and overseas copies separately, since postage is very different.
Bringing the rate down
The cheapest fixes are usually process ones:
- act on gone-away returns every issue, not in a batch twice a year;
- give customer service a single place to record "moved on" and "left the company";
- clean addresses at the point of entry, so a typo never reaches the mailing file;
- for controlled circulation, keep request dates up to date so you know who has gone quiet.
We wrote more about it in gone-aways and why they cost you. In Avio, our platform for larger publishers, gone-aways and missed copies sit next to the subscriber record, and the data quality tools find duplicates and suspect addresses before they're mailed.
If you'd like help working out your real figure, or you'd rather our bureau team handled returns for you, get in touch.
Questions
Where do I find my bad address rate?
Start with returned mail and gone-away notifications from your mailing house, then add the people your customer service team has been told have moved on. For B2B titles, job moves are the big one: the address is fine but the person has gone.
Does this include the cost of the lost reader?
No. It only counts the print and postage you spend on copies nobody reads. For controlled circulation titles, an out-of-date record also weakens the file you sell to advertisers, which is harder to put a number on but often matters more.
Is anything I type saved or sent to you?
No. The sums run in your browser and nothing leaves the page.