Here at Stannp, we like to make it as easy as possible for our customers to send Direct Mail campaigns, and the Stannp platform will do it’s best to interpret your data in whatever format that you upload it.
However, one sure way to speed up the process of creating a campaign is to maximise the number of addresses that verify first time.
If you want to find out more about address verification you can read all about it in our “Why are My Addresses not Verified“ blog post.
When you upload data to the Stannp platform, it remains your data, you are the ‘data controller’ and Stannp is the ‘data processor’. Unfortunately this means that the Stannp team are unable to edit or reformat data on your behalf, as you obtain full control over the data.
One great way to get your data structure right first time is to download our Example Data File and use it as a template for the headings and content of your data before you upload.
Your Stannp team have put together some top tips to help you get your data right first time, every time. In each of the examples below, green text shows the right way to do things, and red text shows errors and things to avoid.
Make sure the address fields are separated correctly, and are in the correct order;
Make sure there are no duplicate entries in a row, or duplicate numbers in a field;
Make sure all addresses have a postcode, and the postcode is in the ‘postcode’ column;
If there are international addresses in your data, make sure you include a ‘country‘ column in your data and indicate the country using 2 letter country codes (also know as ‘Alpha-2’ codes in the ISO 3166 international standard.);
The Stannp platform is happy to handle sending to multiple countries from the same data set as long as you include the country code.
Some of our customers find it easier for their teams to manage if they upload data for each country as a separate data file.
Don’t forget you can also set a Default country when you upload your data; the Stannp platform will use this where your data doesn’t include a country code.
Where you are using personalised data in your campaign, (for example “Dear {firstname}”), make sure you have an entry in every row (i.e. no blanks in the data).
Having blanks in your data won’t prevent the addresses from verifying, but it will look strange to your (un-named) recipients to receive post addressed to “Dear “.
Make sure that there are no special characters in the data or column headers;