Data Hygiene Tactics

In our last Marketing Tip (Database Marketing Key Issues), we addressed the various sources of data that can be used to populate your marketing database. Regardless of the source of the data, an on-going concern you will need to address is the methods to clean and maintain your data.

There are many ways to approach data hygiene, but we have outlined some of the most common:

Check for Duplicates

Database marketing providers should have software to check your data for duplicates based off of any field, and identify those that are either exact matches or suspected matches for manual intervention. For example, are Bob Jones and Robert Jones the same person? If they have the same address, it may be safe to assume the records are duplicates, but if they have significantly different address, then they may be different. Also, if you want to only send one communication to a household, you may want to check for duplicates by street address.

Postal Delivery Software

There are postal delivery software programs that allow you to analyze your contact data to check for US postal deliverability. It will identify potential address issues and offer potential corrections. This will help assure that simple mistakes in encoding data are caught. It will also help assure that any direct mail initiatives will have a higher rate of success by assuring deliverability.

National Change of Address (NCOA)

When individuals move to a new residence and notify the Post Office to have their mail forwarded, that change of address is submitted to a limited number of National Change of Address (NCOA) organizations. Marketers can submit their contact data to one of the NCOA vendors who will provide information on the updated addresses.

Similar to the Postal Delivery Software, it will help improve deliverability by making sure direct mail pieces are sent to the correct address.

The service is also available for business addresses, but it will only help at the business level, not for individuals working for the business.

Data Appending Services

Occasionally marketers are interested in adding data elements to their database that weren’t previously collected (such as email addresses, fax numbers, etc.), or want to append new records that they didn’t have previously.

There are data service companies that will take your database, match the records against their database, and append the additional data elements to your database. While it rarely results in a perfect match, it provides a quick and inexpensive way to collect valuable new data elements.

Tele-research Services

Often time, especially with business-to-business databases, the best approach to securing accurate and timely data is to use telemarketing services. With well refined scripting, telemarketers can ask more probing questions to secure data or get information on multiple contacts within one company.

This type of service is significantly more expensive than the other electronic approaches, but depending on the nature of your marketing database needs, it can be very effective in providing a solid marketing database.

Using Feedback Mechanisms

Both direct mail and email have feedback mechanisms that can be used to identify “undeliverable” communications. Some postal classifications allow organizations to request information on undeliverable mail, and email service providers should be able to report on “hard bounces”. Organizations should develop an internal procedure to follow up on these undelivered communications to determine why they failed, and update the database to reflect the new information.

Need More Tips?

Applying techniques, such as these, will help organizations assure that their data asset will retain its value over time. DMC Advertising has over 20 years of experience in database driven marketing communications programs. For more information on database marketing or other marketing techniques, contact DMC Advertising at (608) 523-2000.