The incident-response mailing partner under your engagement.
Your practice ends where the mail begins, and the handoff is where matters slip. This page is written for the person who has to make that handoff work repeatedly: the field spec we accept, the capacity we can commit, who you call at 11 p.m., and how the deliverables come back under your name.
Can you operate inside our IR workflow at our volume — and what exactly do we hand you?
One clean seam in the response.
We take the output of review and return the evidence your matter file needs. Nothing in between requires your coordination.
Forensics
Scope, containment, data set identified. Yours.
Review
Affected individuals and data elements determined. Yours or your review partner's.
Handoff
Finalized list to our spec, over SFTP or portal. The seam.
Production
Hygiene, composition, proofs, print, insert. Ours.
Deposit with USPS in the elected class. Ours.
Return
Evidence package and return-mail reporting into your file. Ours.
The layout we accept — publish it to your review team.
We map to your output if you already have a standard; this is the layout that needs no mapping conversation at hour zero.
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| record_id | Yes | Your unique key. Carried through to the manifest so your file and ours reconcile. |
| addressee_line | Conditional | Use when the recipient is not the affected individual — guardians, estates. |
| first_name / last_name | Yes | Discrete fields. Middle name and suffix optional, separate. |
| address_1 / address_2 | Yes | Discrete. Do not pack the full address into one field. |
| city / state / zip | Yes | ZIP as text — leading zeros survive that way. |
| country | Conditional | Required if any record is non-US. Foreign addresses are split and quoted separately. |
| population_code | Conditional | Required if more than one letter version. A short code — not the exposure detail. |
| enrollment_code | Conditional | Required if the letter offers monitoring. Must be unique per record. |
| deceased_flag | Optional | Send it if review knows. Saves a suppression cycle. |
| minor_flag | Optional | Drives guardian addressing where counsel directs it. |
Format rules
- Delimited text (pipe preferred), fixed-width, or Excel. One row per intended recipient. Header row included.
- UTF-8. Tell us if the export is something else so diacritics do not arrive corrupted in a recipient's name.
- Pipe delimiter over comma where addresses may contain commas, which they do.
- No exposure detail. Send the population code, not the data elements involved for each individual. We do not need it and would rather not hold it.
- Transfer by SFTP or encrypted portal only. Never by email, never by consumer file-sharing link. This is a hard rule, including at 2 a.m.
Illustrative record
record_id|first_name|last_name|address_1|address_2|city|state|zip|country|population_code|enrollment_code
1001|John|Doe|123 Main St|Apt 4|Springfield|IL|62704|US|A|SAMPLE-0000-0000
Fictitious example. Do not send live recipient data to illustrate a format question — send us five rows of obviously fake data, or just the header row.
What we will send back
- An intake receipt with record count and field-level validation results, usually within the hour.
- An exception report classified into decisions you must make now versus items that resolve in return mail.
- A manifest keyed on your record_id, so your matter file can be reconciled against ours without a join exercise.
Commitments you can plan a practice around.
Retainer windows
GuaranteedIR firms and carriers can hold guaranteed 48-hour emergency capacity under a standing retainer that waives per-matter setup and credits against usage. This is the only way to make "we can mail in 48 hours" a commitment rather than a hope, because it reserves press and labor rather than competing for it.
Concurrent matters
IsolatedMultiple live matters from the same firm run as separate matters with separate access scopes, separate manifests, and separate evidence packages. Nothing is co-mingled at any stage — not in the file system, not on the press, not in the mail stream.
After-hours escalation
Named humansRetainer partners get named escalation contacts with direct mobile numbers and a documented escalation path — not a general intake line. Weekend and overnight production is standard on the emergency tier, so the contact is someone who can actually start a shift.
Dual facility
CA + TXTwo production sites mean a single-site disruption does not put a statutory deadline at risk. For an IR practice, that is the difference between a continuity story you can tell your client and one you cannot.
Surge without renegotiation
Standing termsRates, tiers, and terms are set once in the retainer. When three matters land in a week, nobody is negotiating a quote at hour zero — you open matters against existing terms and we confirm mail dates.
Whose name appears where.
You control the client-facing surface. There is exactly one place we must be named, and it is for your benefit.
| Artifact | Default | Options |
|---|---|---|
| Notification letter | Affected organization's letterhead and signature | We never appear on the recipient piece |
| Envelope | Client return address | Or your firm's, or a dedicated return address for the matter |
| Reports to you | Our format | Co-branded or issued under your firm's cover |
| Client-facing summaries | Unbranded | Your logo and voice; we supply the content |
| Affidavit of mailing | Names NotifyCertain as the mailing party | Not white-labeledAn affidavit that misstates who performed the mailing is worthless — and worse than worthless if challenged. |
| Invoice | To your firm | Or direct to the client, with your matter reference |
How partners typically structure it.
Subcontractor beneath your engagement
You hold the client relationship and the engagement letter; we invoice you at partner rates and you present a single line to the client. Simplest for firms that want the mailing to look like part of the practice.
Referral to a direct engagement
The client contracts with us directly, on your recommendation, and pays us directly. Cleanest where the mailing cost is claimed under a cyber policy that requires direct vendor invoices, or where you would rather not carry postage float — which on a large First-Class mailing is most of the spend.
Panel placement
Carriers and MGAs add us to a panel for the small and mid-size matters where large administrators are slow, oversized, or uninterested. Panel terms, rate cards, and reporting are set once. Onboarding paperwork detail is on the panel page.
In every structure, the security posture, the BAA, the proof-approval gate, and the evidence package are identical. Commercial structure changes who signs and who pays, not how the work is done.
Questions IR practices ask
We already have a mapping standard from our review platform. Do we have to change it?
No. Send us your layout and a header-only sample; we build the mapping once and reuse it on every subsequent matter. The spec above exists so a first matter can start without that conversation, not to force a change on a working pipeline.
Can you take a list before review is fully complete?
Yes, and on short clocks it is the right move. A near-final file lets us build mapping, composition, and hygiene logic in advance; we re-run against the final file when it lands. Service-level commitments attach to the final approved file.
How do you handle the same individual appearing in two of our matters?
They stay separate. Matters are isolated by design, so a person affected by two of your clients' incidents receives two letters — which is correct, since each notification is a separate obligation of a different organization. We will not silently de-duplicate across matters.
Do you work directly with our data-mining vendor?
On your written authorization, yes — vendor-to-vendor on file format and delivery mechanics, with substantive decisions still routing through you. It removes you as a relay on technical questions without removing you from control.
What does the retainer actually reserve?
Production capacity in a defined window and priority in queue, plus locked rates and waived per-matter setup. It is credited against usage rather than consumed as a fee. We size it against your historical matter volume — tell us last year's count and we will propose rather than guess.
Can you provide status into our client-facing portal or reporting?
We provide per-matter status and structured reports you can feed into your own reporting. We do not build integrations into client portals as part of a standard engagement, though a scheduled report drop to your SFTP is straightforward.