Every marketing team has a horror story this spooky season. The database with more gone-aways than genuine prospects. The campaign that went out to everybody and converted no-one. The spreadsheet nobody wants to open after dark.
With 2027 marketing planning in progress, it’s worth checking you’re not quietly inheriting last year’s mistakes. Here are five of the most common marketing horrors and how to put them to rest before they’re allocated next year’s budget.
1. Graveyard of gone-aways
Mailing lists decay quietly. People move house, change jobs or simply stop being reachable at the address on file and none of it shows up until the mail comes back marked ‘not known at this address’.
Every undelivered pack is wasted print, postage and handling, and a missed chance with a prospect who might still be a good fit, just not at that address. Regular suppression against gone-away, deceased and change-of-address data keeps a list current rather than haunted, and it’s one of the most cost-effective fixes available before a campaign goes out.
2. One person, five ghostly records
A database rarely has one record per person. It’s far more common to find the same person two or three times over, filed under a maiden name, an old email address, a slightly different spelling or logged separately at every previous address.
Left unchecked, duplicates mean the same person receives the same mailing more than once, at the agency’s cost and brand’s expense of looking disorganised. Deduplication and matching before a campaign launches is unglamorous work but it’s the difference between one well-targeted pack and three that land on the same doormat.
3. A campaign built for nobody in particular
“Send it to everybody” feels safe but broad targeting is one of the most expensive horrors on this list. JICMAIL’s latest Response Rate Tracker puts direct mail ROI as low as £2.00 for partially addressed mail, sent to the occupier rather than a named person, against as much as £11.50 for warm, targeted direct mail sent to a known, engaged audience.
The starting point should be the data that already works. Analysing existing customers to understand what makes the best ones different, then using that to build a model, identify similar prospects and prioritise who gets mailed. Time spent sharpening the audience before a campaign goes live tends to pay for itself several times over.
4. Consent you can’t account for
Consent horror stories tend to surface at the worst possible moment, usually when a regulator asks to see the lawful basis behind a campaign.
The rules also evolve, for example, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 introduced a new charitable purpose soft opt-in, based on legitimate interest and providing opt-out offers when details are collected and on every message that follows.
A quick audit of what consent or other lawful basis sits behind each list will help avoid an uncomfortable conversation later.
5. A campaign nobody can prove worked
A campaign that cannot be measured is a campaign that’s hard to defend at budget time. Without response tracking or attribution, there’s no way to say which mailing, email or audience actually drove the result, which makes it difficult to argue for the same budget next year, let alone more.
Platforms like JICMAIL exist precisely to close this gap for direct mail, giving a cross-channel view of what’s really driving response. Whatever the method, building measurement in before a campaign launches, rather than trying to reconstruct it afterwards, is what turns a one-off send into evidence for the next plan.
Don’t let 2027 become a horror story
Many of these horrors are preventable. Clean data, a well-defined audience, clear lawful basis and proper measurement are all fixable well before a 2027 plan is locked in, and each one makes the campaigns that follow easier to justify.
This is exactly the territory PDV works in every day, helping clients keep their data, audiences and direct mail campaigns in check. If any of the above sounds familiar, it’s worth a chat before your next campaign goes out…
