Document Projects. Marketing & Customer Communications Management

Postal and Telephone Communication Compliance – Mailing Supression Files (MPS) and Telephone Supression Files (TPS) October 30, 2008

In both the US and UK, mailers are required and if not required, advised to check their address files against a number of key database files. These files are in place to protect the consumer against unsolicited mail.

There are numerous files available but, the key files that you should be implementing to ensure compliance include:

Telephone Preference Service (TPS) – This is a list maintained whereby the consumer can register her desire to be on the list. In theory at least, the customer should not then receive sales calls to their phone line.  Companies are liable to fines if they do not adhere to the Telephone Preference Service.

Mailing Preference Service (MPS) – This works in exactly the same way as the Telephone Preference Service and when pursuing direct mail activities, companies should check their print streams to exclude any individuals whose names are on the register.

National Change of Address File (NCOA) – The national change of address file records data where postal providers such as the USPS and Royal Mail have been advised by customers that they have moved house.

Deceased – Both the US and the UK offer deceased files in order that you can exclude causing offence by mailing the deceased. In the US there are even files that offer predictions for deceased. Now there is an idea!

There are various other files available but the list above perhaps represent the most important ones.

Quite apart from the potential for a fine, it is just good business practice to observe and respond to the data in these files.

In respect of implementing the software, there are a number of approaches.

Suppressing Telephone Calls – Validation software can operate and integrate live with your customer relationship management application. As an agent calls up a customer to call, there can be a real-time check against the database and the agent can be disallowed from making the call.

Suppressing Mail – This can happen at a number of points within the organisation. If you are operating a MDM policy, it may be worth considering the age of the data before it is turned into a document. If there is a significant lapse here then you will almost certainly want to implement the suppression at the automated document factory level to maximise your compliance opportunity. If the data is drawn from the MDM platform and turned to documents instantly, then managing the quality of the data at the early stages of the process will probably suffice.

If delivering the suppression at the automated document factory then, if the documents are generated by an in-house document composition platform you will be able to perform the various database look-ups as the documents are composed and as part of the composition application.

If the documents are generated by a business applications (perhaps you should look at customer communications management solution and its advantages) then you may need to implement a print stream engineering solution such as that offered by Streamserve or Pitney Bowes Emtex to ‘post-process’ the files and execute the suppression.

There are many suppliers of these suppression files and a simple internet search will realise plenty of people you can talk to. This requirement is not just for big business and smaller companies should also consider their compliance position.