Keeping tabs on customers moving home or office is essential if you want to keep your data up to date, create well-targeted marketing campaigns and, most importantly, make more sales.

Start by understanding the patterns and trends in these groups to help you identify new marketing opportunities – moving is often a major trigger for purchase or switching to another product or service.

Royal Mail conducts extensive research on home movers and publishes the Consumer Barometer and Business Barometer every six months. These are in-depth reports about home and business movers, which show shifts in volumes, emerging trends and behavioural changes.

Here are the highlights from the most recent research:

1. Recession means fewer moves
   More than two million (7.9%) of English, Welsh and Scottish households moved home in 2007. Following the credit crisis, this volume has dropped dramatically by around 29% in 2008, but there still remains a marketplace of just under 1.5 million households annually. There’s also been a decline in the rental market and the association of realtors found that landlords were increasingly offering higher value incentives in order to secure a letting.
   
   
2. Moving leads to spending money
   People moving house spend on average five times more in the first six months of moving than the following five years. Consumer research firm the Yankelovich Group found that 40% of new movers even change their brand of toothpaste, and that it takes up to six months for a mover to become familiar with their surroundings and a further two years for them to feel settled. When businesses relocate, the chances are they’ll be re-evaluating their range of suppliers for services such as IT, telecoms, accountancy, legal services, facilities management and marketing communications. This is an ideal opportunity to do some serious marketing.
   
   
3. The right data is crucial
   Marketers who have recognised that home and business moving is a major trigger for purchase, or switching to their product or service, need accurate and up-to-date information on home and business movers to maximise their sales in the current slow economic period. The research found that more than 50% ask Royal Mail to re-direct their mail and many give permission to be used for updating third party databases and to receive offers and promotions from Royal Mail customers. Royal Mail frequently updates its databases and makes the new data available within seven working days.
   
   
4. Know your geography
   The research indicates that certain postcodes show the highest level of activity. London and its satellite areas are at the top of the list, but other areas, like Harrogate in Yorkshire, Oxford, Exeter and Bath, are beginning to emerge. Some product and service providers are focused on people moving into an area (home furnishings, retail, insurance companies, leisure facilities), while others are more interested in people moving out (removal services, storage facilities, redirection services).
   
   
5. Follow consumer markets
   Movement of households in and out of an area is a useful indicator to plot the growth or decline of available consumer markets in the area. The research confirmed that London continues to be a magnet for relocation, mainly for young people at the start of their working lives. Of the 20.5 million homes in England alone, the majority of families live in London or the South East. As a result, this part of the country shows the largest amount of home moving, representing 20% of the new job placement market. The capital also remains very dominant as a business location.

The Home Movers Mailing Service can identify details and addresses of these families and companies, making sure that you’re the first name through their door

Redirection is a cost-effective way of continuing to receive mail when you move home or business, even if the move is temporary, or to an overseas address.  You can now redirect mail from your home address online.