gripmarketing

It’s that time of year again when salon owners want to target students and for some of them, its the best sales months of the year. College and university mail is special for many reasons.

Targeting off-campus housing is easy…
Off campus, the USPS delivers mail directly to residences and businesses and all that’s needed is a list and map so you can identify the off-campus housing and areas you want to mail. Your mail house should be able to provide this and of course, Grip Marketing does provide this.

However, addresses located on campus are non-postal service delivery routes, so focusing on dorms where first-year and in some cases, second-year students reside, changes the process. Why?

In a small town of 25,000, the USPS might have on average 2,500 households move every year and accordingly, they keep up with that. But what about where the entire town of 25,000 moves every three months? Costs soar. Campus delivery routes and address formats further complicate matters. Each school has its own. Some use a box system, others names, and still others mail stop codes. Because USPS sorting machines do not support non-postal route delivery schemes (remember that old line, ‘those who cannot do, teach’…so schools do not adopt USPS schemes like everyone else on the planet , and the mail comes in random order to the campus mail center.

While the USPS brings mail to the campus mail center, the college or university is responsible for delivery to the ultimate recipients – faculty, staff, and students. Because electronic sorting at the school level is usually not economically feasible, most schools sort mail by hand. With the average campus receiving over 1 million pieces a year, delivery can add up to one giant headache for the school.

Targeting on-campus is now easy, too…
Now there is a better solution . In 2003, a new software company began work with colleges, universities, and Grip Marketing using proprietary software to match a mailer’s address list to non-standardized routing schemes. Viola! Success!

Of course, this process requires the cooperation of the college or university to make the software work. Hundreds have signed up. Not only does this new process reduce delivery times by 50 percent, reduce returns by 40%, but also decreases postage costs to help offset a salon’s student list costs.

Contact Grip to find out if you can take advantage of this and your school is on the list. And get help making this one of the best years ever!

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Gary[ This Message was edited by: gripmarketing on 2005-07-26 13:22 ]