What is the Bereavement Register?

The Bereavement Register is a central database that effectively acts as the main register of deaths in the UK. Created in 2000 with the main aim of stopping direct mail being sent to the deceased, it is now a very important consideration for any organisation that sends direct mail.

A deceased person’s details can be registered and their information will be entered into a bank of data. Organisations who wish to check their mailing lists against the Bereavement Register are able to identify any matches and are then obliged by law to remove these records from future mailings.

Why is the Bereavement Register important?

The Bereavement Register allows organisations to:

• Minimise the distress that sending mail to the deceased can cause to family and friends and the negative impact this could potentially have on customer perception.
• Keep their database clean and up to date - reducing the cost of sending unwanted mail.

The Bereavement Register is just one of many suppression sets available. Suppression is a critical part of the data cleansing process and matching your database against data sets such as the Bereavement Register allows you to remove appropriate records as part of that process. By doing this you can always be confident you are only ever mailing to the right people.