Partially Addressed Mail (PAM) is a Royal Mail service enabling the specialist targeting of individual postcode units which are typically made up of 15 households. It has been suggested that this represents a post GDPR alternative to buying mailing lists of prospective customers.

However, unlike a direct mail list that has real names on the envelope and on the letter, with Partially Addressed Mail only the address is printed onto the envelope or card being used in the mailing with a prefix of your choice, for example, The Occupier, The Homeowner, The Charity Donor, The Broadband Buyer, etc.

While the cost of a fully addressed direct mail campaign is going to include the cost of buying the list and discounted postage, the Partially Addressed Mail cost is likely to be approximately 17-19p per household, plus fulfilment charges.

Your existing customers can be removed from the mailing, so you’ll not waste a part of your  budget mailing recruitment items when someone in the postcode unit is already a customer

Postcode units may be targeted for a variety of reasons, including:

• To reach similar people in postcode units where you already have customers
• To match an audience profile of your customers using MOSAIC or ACORN
• To reach prospects near a business location or different outlets
• To integrate with other media channels

Since its inception, Partially Addressed Mail has frequently replaced the use of cold direct mail as an acquisition tool. This is because for many, direct mail has ceased to become an option post-GDPR, as buying lists of names and addresses is often no longer viable. However, Partially Addressed Mail is fully GDPR compliant.

As you are targeting at postcode level, you can use your existing customer postcodes to target similar households in customer ‘rich’ postcodes. Additionally, this can be enhanced with geo-demographic profiling software to identify similar prospect ‘look-a-likes’.

Partially Addressed Mail – The Letterbox Consultancy View

Partially Addressed Mail arrived in 2019 with much fanfare, heralded by some as a new solution for advertisers, destined to produce high response at discounted rates.

The truth is that as with all media channels, Partially Addressed Mail will have a value for some clients and not for others, and responsible door drop providers will understand what an appropriate campaign could be and when to recommend using it.

At the Letterbox Consultancy, Partially Addressed Mail fits into our spectrum of distribution solutions, falling somewhere between our unique SMART-Drop service and fully addressed mail.

While PAM can be used to target postcode unit of 15 homes, SMART-Drop distribution enables the delivery of unaddressed material to clusters of 100-150 homes. If you think about it, the geodemographics of 100-150 homes is likely to be very similar.

So, while Partially Addressed Mail offers selectivity, down to postcode unit level, it’s likely to crush your budget by being 300 to 400% times the cost.

For some clients, that additional cost will be worthwhile and for others it will not.

With our vast understanding of the differences in the quality and efficiency between different distribution methods, and the insights we have from the results achieved by hundreds of different users, we suggest talking with us today about your planned activity and which tools we recommend will produce the best results for your campaign.