10 Steps to Prepare Your Data for Direct Marketing

If your customer and prospect data aren’t accurate, trustworthy, and actionable, your direct marketing campaign is doomed, no matter how sterling every other aspect of it is. Happily, Highlands Ranch, CO-based database marketing company Dovetail has come up with a checklist of 10 data processes to perform to ensure the accuracy of your data and the efficiency of your compaign:

1) Data integration All your pertinent direct marketing data, regardless of source, must be integrated into one single data repository for the purpose of direct marketing. Without proper data integration, it is difficult or impossible to run counts, pull lists, perform analysis, and track campaign history, all of which are essential to meet basic marketing campaign needs.

2) Value validation As you add records are to your marketing database, perform value checks to identify data that may be invalid. For instance, if gender values should be either “F” and “M”, but a “1” and “2” are present in the gender field, these latter values are invalid and need to be corrected.

3) Distribution validation You also need to compare the distribution of values for the current update and previous updates of records, to ensure the data is accurate. If it is typical for 15% of customers to buy a certain product, for example, but 45% have purchased that product in a given update, the newest data violate a distributive norm and need to be verified and, if applicable, corrected.

4) Relationship validation New records need to be checked for internal consistency against the existing database. For instance, if part of the new data consists of “cancelled customers,” you need to ensure that they are in fact current customers. If they do not show up as current customers in the existing database, the internal consistency of the data is compromised and needs to be corrected.

5) Contact information standardization Applying standardization techniques to your marketing database helps to ensure the accuracy of contact information. In a street address, “Ave” can also be stated as “av,” “av.,” or “Avenue.” Postal address standardization software will replace all of these values with “Ave”, based on U.S. Postal Service standards. You should perform similar standardization on phone numbers and e-mail addresses. By performing standardization, you increase the likelihood of reaching the individuals you are targeting in your marketing campaigns.

6) Identify marketing levels–individuals, households, residences, and businesses Identifying and omitting duplicate records in your marketing database ensures that an individual is contacted only once per marketing campaign. This step is also known as merge/purge and can be used to identify unique individuals, households, residences, or businesses.

7) Run National Change of Address (NCOA) The NCOA process identifies new movers and updates their street addresses in your data base, eliminating many undeliverables and ensuring that your addresses are up to date.

8) Use delivery point validation (DPV) The DPV process compares and validates street addresses against the master Postal Service database to ensure that the street addresses exist as specific delivery points within the postal system.

9) Browse data A fundamental data check is to simply look through your data verifying that all the information is complete, is in the appropriate place, and looks valid. You’ll be surprised how often this step helps identify issues with your data.

10) Go with your gut Another fundamental data check is to follow your instincts. Who knows your data as well as you? It pays to follow your intuition and check into any items that just don’t seem right.

Performing each of these steps before each direct marketing campaign is good. Performing them as part of routine processes is even better, and performing them as part of an integrated marketing database solution is the best.