Keeping your contacts database clean and up to date is a vital but often-overlooked part of direct mail campaign management. Steven Day, director of UKChanges, a specialist contact data management bureau, explains how to clean up your database’s act…

Thousands of people move house every day – and often they’ll forget to tell you. Changes like this have a big impact on the accuracy of your contacts database, making direct mail campaigns costly and not necessarily effective. All this makes suppression screening – the removal from your database of any customers reported as ‘goneaway’, ‘deceased’ or ‘do not mail’ – a must.

Cleansing and enhancement

There is a vast array of cleansing and enhancement files available that will enable you to identify goneaways and obtain new addresses, flag deceased individuals, add telephone numbers, verify occupancy, correct inaccurate addresses and apply preference service flags.

Independent bureaux are best placed to offer genuine and impartial advice on the most suitable range of services to apply, but do your own research to verify the information provided and ensure you are satisfied with the advice you receive.

Pay attention to the source of your data and consider the implications of all the information you glean. Although certain suppression files offer a confidence rating of one to ten, most suppression data is designated as either ‘assumed’ or ‘assured’.

Assumed data can come from a range of sources, including electoral roll deletes, postal returns and non-responder files. Multiple assumed data triggers for a record suggest that the suppression is correct, but it isn't completely certain.

Assured data suppressions come from verifiable sources, including the probate system and Royal Mail registrations, for example.

Tip When trying to reduce volumes for prospecting campaigns, assumed suppression data will remove a larger number of possible goneaways. When undertaking customer communications, it's often best to use assured suppression data, avoiding the risk of removing valid customer records and undermining campaign effectiveness by reducing the contact pool too much.

There are also decisions to make regarding how the various files are applied:

• Processing order will depend on the project goals and channels: a good bureau will consider this before suggesting which files to run in which order.
• Over-suppression will remove too many valid records from your file and increase the costs of the processing – be confident in your bureau’s ability to match accurately.
• Single use or permanent flag: single-use suppression offers a lower-cost option that allows you to remove a record from a campaign file, whereas permanent flags cost more but can be fed back to the master database to identify records that are no longer valid.

When you've decided on all of the services, established the rules and determined the suppression options, it's time to process the data.

Clean-up time

A big clean through a bureau is a time-consuming process, often requiring several planning meetings to establish the job specification. Actual data processing time is, by comparison, quite short. The huge processing power of servers means that many millions of records can be passed against several services very quickly. Manual checking will also be applied between processes to ensure that everything runs as planned.

Depending on the scale and complexity of the project, your bureau should be able to provide a realistic timetable for the processes involved.

Tip Establish service level agreements, delivery timeframes, job specifications and costs before committing to processing your data.

Cost of data cleaning

Prices vary between suppliers, depend on volumes and may change according to frequency of use or files selected. Some files are charged on a ‘per record searched’ basis, others on a ‘per record matched’ basis. Some files incur set-up charges. Some processes have a fixed cost. Most suppliers operate a minimum order policy.

Establishing prices is a case of shopping around, but be careful that you compare like with like. Where some companies may appear to charge a premium, the cost differential can often be attributed to the added value of experience, support, technology or breadth of datasets available.

Automated services, often driven by the user via a web-based system or installed software, tend to avoid the set-up charges associated with traditional offline bureau as the job creation and data processing is undertaken by the user.

If you’re selecting an online service, work with a supplier that provides support and, if possible, an offline bureau that can provide additional resource and expertise if current or future projects become more complex.

Tip Data security is a major concern for many client companies. Ensure the bureau you use has tried and tested security policies and a disaster recovery plan. Insist on 128-bit SSL web security, file encryption and comprehensive data delete/overwrite policies. Look for the ISO27001 information security standard and membership of a recognised industry body, such as the DMA, which requires members to observe a code of practice and adhere to the Data Protection Act.

Going forward

With the big clean completed, the data is ready to be used and, providing your campaign cycles are not too long, it should be in far better condition for future direct mail activity.

One way to ensure the data remains in prime condition is to select a bureau that provides both traditional and online services. The value of an online service is most clear when you’re undertaking maintenance of cleansed data prior to new campaigns, as the services are user-driven, lower-cost, accessible, flexible and fast, allowing users to undertake just-in-time cleanses to meet tight deadlines.

The best systems will put the user in control, allowing them to screen against the files that they need and avoid additional processing, as well as alter the order in which files are applied to their data and amend output options.

Tips for data success...

The data cleansing market has become very competitive, with a large number of suppliers. To be sure your project is a success you need to:

• Know what you want to achieve.
• Talk to different suppliers.
• Seek advice.
• Be realistic about your goals.
• Be confident in your bureau’s ability.
• Take advantage of consultancy.
• Use the free data audit facilities available.
• Establish the specification and costs of the project at the outset.

By cleaning and maintaining your data you will quickly recover the cost of your investment through enhanced targeting, reduced wastage and improved return on investment (ROI). And once your data is nice and clean, you're ready to execute any campaign.

Please note, before purchasing or using any personal data you should consult with a data protection expert to ensure the data and the proposed use of it complies with the Data Protection Act 1998. You should also obtain advice from a data protection specialist solicitor before embarking on any direct mailing using personal data.