The start of a new year is a good time to make plans, get organized, and clean things up. Did scrubbing your customer file make the list? Data Hygiene can have a major impact on your marketing performance and budget. Let’s look at some of the problems that occur from messy data as well as different data hygiene processes you can run to clean up your customer data for the new year.
Poor Data Hygiene Can Cause
Duplicates
Over time, customers move, use different email addresses, or get new phone numbers. They might even change their name. While some customers will update their information, many times the new contact data is entered as a separate entry. Sometimes, a customer simply cannot remember what information is tied to their account or their profile cannot be located at the point of sale, so a new customer entry is created. This leads to multiple profiles being created for the same customer. If it’s not cleaned up, you could be sending 7 catalogs to same house.
Undeliverable Marketing Pieces
Undeliverable marketing pieces can quickly accumulate and cause high marketing revenue waste. One of the most common causes is bad postal address data. Whether the client information was entered incorrectly or they moved, the postal address needs to line up with what the United States Postal Service has on file to ensure it reaches the correct recipient.
Poor Customer Relationships
If you don’t clean up your customer data, eventually you will be targeting the wrong people or people who are no longer living. When someone moves into a new home, it’s normal to receive the previous tenant’s mail for a brief period of time. However, it will eventually get on the new owner’s nerves as they constantly have to deal with another person’s mail. Their frustration won’t be with the previous owner but with the company who doesn’t update their records. This can generate a bad reputation with someone who has the potential to be a great customer. If the addressed recipient is deceased, it can be highly upsetting to their family members to receive mail addressed to their loved one. Cleaning up your file is not only economical, but it also shows sensitivity to those receiving the piece.
Inaccurate Response Rates
Messy data records can lead to inaccurate response rates on marketing campaigns. If a customer receives multiple coupon codes and uses them all, you might see higher response rates than expected. If loyal customers have inaccurate data records, they may not be receiving the information you are sending them and not responding. You might even lose customers because they haven’t heard from you in a while.
If you have a high rate of undeliverable emails or mail pieces, your response rates will also be skewed. You’ll see a much lower response rate than is correct. This is because your response rate will be based on the number of marketing pieces sent instead of delivered.
What can you do to scrub the list?
Data scientists offer a number of services to help you clean up your customer data and give you the highest chance of success with your marketing campaigns. Depending on what your goals, budget, and needs are, they can offer the following services to get you back on track.
NCOA & CASS
This service makes sure all of your addresses align with what the United States Postal Service has on file. It will flag and update addresses of customers who have moved and format addresses to the USPS standards, ensuring the highest rate of deliverability.
Deduping and Suppressions
Deduplication will flag and merge multiple records for the same customer. This will also make sure the address that remains is their current home address. Suppressions are key if you are trying to target different segments of customers, reach new prospects, or re-engage lapsed customers.
Deceased Suppressions
This process flags anyone who is deceased and removes them from the list.
Special Address Suppressions
This data hygiene step will remove nursing home, military, and prison addresses from your list.
Results & Next Steps
Our clients have saved thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars by incorporating data hygiene into their marketing processes. By cleaning up their customer data, they are able to reach the people they most want to get in front of, reduce their marketing waste, and increase their ROI. The best part is you don’t have to clean up the data list yourself. You can hand that off to our team of experts who get great satisfaction out of a well cleaned list.
Ready to start 2024 with a good list? Reach out to our team. We will be happy to answer any questions you have.