You can come up with the most fabulous marketing materials in the world, and you can invent all sorts of creative ideas for getting the word out about your home-based business, but if you don’t have an accurate and useable database or mailing list then all that creativity won’t be fully utilized. It is important to keep your contacts and mailing lists cleaned out and up-to-date, even if you only mail a few times a year.
The most useable mailing list will be one that is in an accessible format. I’m sorry, but the rolodex is out and now if you want to be able to keep your contacts organized, you’ll need to get them into some sort of database. This doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should be adequate for whatever sort of business you are operating and be able to be changed when you get change-of-address forms or find out that something has changed.
It is not necessary to update your mailing list daily, but you should set aside a regular time to do it—say once a week or once a month. The same goes for any e-mail records, although you may want to do these more often. Saving everything up for once a year is really taking the risk that the information will be really obsolete. It might help to keep in mind that it actually saves your business money to keep the mailing list current as you won’t be mailing to dead addresses, wasting materials, or paying for return service information.
If you are a large company, or do a lot of mailings, it might be worth your while to send out a mailing just to “clean up” your list once a year or once every two years. Sending out a simple postcard with “return address request service” and asking people if they want to remain on your mailing list can be beneficial in helping you keep a clean, accurate mailing list.
Also: Have You Thought About Purchasing a Mailing List?