MPS gets Personal  
The Board of DMA has decided to make 2 important changes to the Mailing Preference Service (MPS).

The file has been in existence for over 20 years and the following recommendations, made by an MPS Working Party, set up by the DMA Board to review the MPS, are being made.

Currently subscriber details are registered on the MPS under surname and address; this effectively means that if one person registers his/her address, the entire household who hold the same surname will be registered. However from September 2007 this will change and details about the subscriber will go from household level to Individual. This means that an individual can register themselves onto MPS and other members of that household who wish to continue to receive unsolicited direct mail can continue do so. An individual, with the permission of others, can still register the entire household but this will be done on an individual basis.

For example Mr John Smith lives with his wife and his 2 grown up children. Mr Smith does not want to receive unsolicited direct mailings so can register 'Smith' and his address. This effectively stops direct mailings going to anyone living at that address with the surname of Smith, which in this case is the entire household, even if other members of the household wish to continue to receive direct mailings.

However from September 2007, Mr John Smith can choose to register himself on to MPS by using his forename together with his surname and address. This means his wife and 2 grown up children will continue to receive direct mailings if they do not register.

How will this affect the way Licensees take the MPS file?

All existing 'R' (remove) records held on the existing MPS file will be held at surname at address level records (as it happens currently).

The number of records held at surname at address level will remain constant over time, (except for those removed during the annual file clean). All new registrations will be added to a new file at individual at address level and the number of records of this format will increase over time.

This means the records will need to be output as 2 files:

• Surname at address level file (this will be a constant file which will only be updated once a year). This will be sent out in September and thereafter every February when the annual file cleaning is done.
• Individual at address level file (which will increase in size each month). These will be output as 'P' (personal) records.

Note that the changes do not affect the X (deceased) records - these remain as before, registered at personal level by initial or initials.

For a period of up to one year you can choose to receive the individual file in a surname format i.e. as it is currently, if your IT systems will take longer to update than the introduction date of the new system.

This temporary file will be available from a web download or via ftp only. If you receive your MPS file by CD Rom you will need to let us know if you require the Individual file in Surname format, so that we can grant you web or ftp access for this file. Otherwise we shall continue to issue the new MPS Personal file via CD-Rom

The second change to the MPS file will be a 5 year registration period for all subscribers who register after September 2007. They will need to re-register every 5 years.

Further information can be downloaded here -> Word , PDF