Charity donors: charities are last to be told when moving house

In the US, 40 million people move house each year – that’s approximately 14 per cent of the country – and only a third of these people report their move to the National Change of Address registry, meaning that around 27 million potential customers are lost to marketers.

In the UK, approximately seven million move house, equating to around 11 per cent of the population each year and, again, only a small percentage register their move with the change of address service.

It’s therefore unsurprising that research reveals organisations in the UK are potentially wasting up to £366 million every year by sending direct mail to people who are no longer there. And this figure is increasing as the number of times people move house is on the rise. In just 40 years, it has doubled from an average of four times a lifetime to eight times. One reason for this growth rate is the reduction in job tenure. For example, the average tenure for a marketing director has halved from four years to two years in just 10 years. People are therefore moving house more to follow the jobs.

Charity donors’ home move: bottom of the to-do list

While this trend is good for removal companies and estate agents, its not such great news for charities. Our latest research reveals that the third sector is the last in the pecking order when it comes to being informed about a home move. When asked to rank the organisations that people would tell when they were moving house, an overwhelming three-quarters of consumers placed charities at the bottom of the table. Unsurprisingly, organisations with a financial interest were ranked highest in order of priority, with employers, governmental agencies and financial services coming first, second and third respectively. As well as charities, retailers and entertainment providers also performed badly, deemed by home movers to be non-essential to inform.

While respondents categorised five types of organisation as ‘essential to inform’, the research showed that despite this they were not rushing to tell them of a move. Typically, the top tier were advised of a new address within three weeks of a move. Important organisations were told within two months and non-essential organisations were not told at all.

Essential to inform
1. Employer and schools
2. Government: DVLA, council, HMRC, Child benefit
3. Financial: banks, building societies, credit cards, store cards, insurance providers, loan providers, HP providers, pension, savings
4. Online accounts and catalogues: eBay, Amazon, Paypal
5. Utility: Gas, electricity, water, landline, mobile, internet, TV
Important to inform
6. Healthcare: doctors, hospitals, dentists, opticians and vet
7. Loyalty: Supermarkets, Avios
8. Automotive (other than DVLA): insurance, breakdown, finance
9. Trades: milkman, cleaner, window cleaner
Non-essential to inform
10. Entertainment: magazine subscriptions, bingo, gym
11. Retailers
12. Charities

This means that non-essential organisations are losing track of a large proportion of their databases. For instance, when combined with the number of people that pass away each year, the average rate of data decay is 2 to 3 per cent a month, meaning that a third of an organisation’s database can be obsolete within a year. This equates to a substantial amount of money for charities both in terms of wastage of direct marketing budget and loss of potential donations.

However, it’s no wonder that charities don’t get a look in as the study also found that home movers now have an average of 39 essential or important organisations to tell they’ve moved house. This takes approximately 10 hours to carry out; a laborious task indeed.

There’s an argument therefore for charities to provide an easy way for donors to tell them that they’ve moved, although given the non-essential categorisation, it is unlikely that such a process would make much difference.

The solution, therefore, lies in solid data hygiene practices. Using suppression goneaway files and reconnect solutions, charities can identify and remove people who have moved from their mailing lists, thus reducing the cost of the direct mail campaign, but also – more importantly – they can trace the new address of lapsed donors.

As we all know, it costs far more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an old one, so spending a small amount on data hygiene is proven to reap rewards for the third sector.

It is said that charity begins at home, but if the donors aren’t at their home it can’t start at all!