Data seems to be coming to the fore again. In every context data forms the central part of every direct marketing campaign- be it off or online. In the ‘old days’ you had a very good reason to keep data clean and current – at the very least you saved the postage and production cost of your direct mail piece! With the advent of digital technology, have we as marketeers got lazy in our data hygience? It’s tempting to say yes, as many Organisations see online marketing as cheap, inpersonal and simply a cheap media choice. Yet those Companies that keep data clean, update email & postal addresses, capture interests, integrate with transactional knowledge (who bought what & when) open the door to ‘Holy Grail’ marketing – the ability to create dynamic, personal and RELEVANT campaigns to every customer & prospect, every time. Little surprise that we see such high response and conversion rates for Clients where data is clean and the commuication is personally relevant. A check list of what you can do to keep data clean :
- Remove ‘unsubscribes’ from your data (if you are one of our Clients this happens automatically)
- Download ’soft’ bounces and get them checked
- Capture all referrals and add them to your CRM data (we frequently profile Organisations using this technique – it is amazingly powerful)
- Run an annual ‘cleansing’ – de-duplication, merging and updating data for incomplete,incorrect or missing fields, PAF files and against SIC code. This is a cheap service we provide but it repays the investment many times over.
- Integrate your web analytics with your CRM
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