When starting a Marketing Database initiative there are several key steps that need to be followed before developing, maintaining and providing access to marketing databases. Before engaging a service provider or investing in a CRM tool kit, follow these 11 steps to quickly integrate all of your marketing data into one repository. By organizing your data, where ever it is, you will reduce the cycle-time, cost and “pain” of initial development. (Most list’s go to “10”….but ours go to “11” !)

11 Ways to Get Your Data Ready for Direct Marketing

The vital prospect and client data necessary to create a successful marketing campaign can be found throughout your organization. However, is all of your data accurate, trustworthy and actionable for your direct marketing campaigns? Is all of your data in one place so it is easy to access? Has your data been validated, standardized and corrected?

There are 11 data processes you should consider performing to ensure your direct marketing campaigns will be conducted accurate and efficient data. These consist of the following:

1) Why is it important to identify where all the data is in your organization?
It is important to understand the parts of your organization that have information on customers. Operational or transactional systems may have RFM-type data, there may be historical customer data residing in various archived databases. Is there customer “touch” or campaign history in the organization? Is there geo-demographic information from surveys, registration compilation, etc.

2) Why is Data History Integration important?
All of your pertinent direct marketing data-regardless of the source or in many cases “age”, 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.

3) Why is data evaluation and validation important?
As new records are added to your marketing database, value checks should be performed to identify data that may be invalid. For instance, if gender values should only be "F" and "M", but a "1" and "2" are present in the gender field, these latter values are invalid and need to be corrected.

4) Why is it important to sense check the distribution and penetration of data in the validation process?
As new records are added to your marketing database, a comparison between the distribution of values for the current update and previous updates should be performed to ensure the data is accurate. For instance, if it is typical for 15% of customers to buy a certain product, but 45% have purchased that product in a given update, the data violates a distributive norm and needs to be verified and, if applicable, corrected.

5) How do your new data inputs stack up to historical data?
As new records are added to your marketing database, they need to be checked for internal consistency against the existing database. For instance, if part of the new data consists of "cancelled customers", a check needs to be performed against the database to ensure these are in fact current customers. If they do not show up as current customers in the existing database, internal consistency of the data is compromised and needs to be corrected.

6) Why is it important to standardize information on the database?
Applying standardization techniques to your marketing database helps to ensure the contact information is accurate. For instance, in a street address, the word "Ave" can be stated as "av", "av.", or "avenue". Postal address standardization software will replace all of these values with "Ave", based on conformance to United States Postal Service Standards. Similar standardization should be performed on phone numbers and email addresses. By performing standardization, you increase the likelihood of reaching the individuals you are targeting in your marketing campaigns.

7) Why is it important to identify and maintain Individuals, Households, Residences, and Businesses on your database?
Identifying and omitting duplicate records in your marketing database ensures an individual is only contacted once with a marketing campaign. This step is also known as merge/purge and can be used to identify unique individuals, households, residences or, in the case of B-to-B marketing, unique businesses.

8) What are some of the Value Added Address Hygiene and Deliverabilty Enhancements available from software providers, service bureaus and the U.S.P.S.?
National Change of Address (NCOA)
The NCOA process identifies new movers and updates their street addresses in your data-eliminating many undeliverables and ensuring that your addresses are up-to-date.

Delivery Point Validation (DPV)
The DPV process compares and validates street addresses against the master United States Postal Service database to ensure the postal addresses exist as specific delivery points within the postal system.

Note: The following 2 items are commonly overlooked. But make no mistake; in many ways, they can be the most important steps to ensuring you have the highest quality, usable data possible.

9) Why is it important to “eye-ball” audit your data?
A manual data check is fundamental to sense checking your data. A simple 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) Why “Sense Check” Your Data?
Another fundamental data check is to follow your instincts-they can and should be trusted! Who knows your data as well as you? No one. It pays off to follow your intuition and check into any items that just don't seem right.

11) Why should I Enhance my Data?
There are a number of ways in which you can enhance the data you are gathering in the course of everyday business. By creating a corporate culture and an understanding that your customer data is your asset, every time you “touch” a customer or prospect you should be attempting to learn more about them. Customer surveys, scripting Customer Services Support to ask for pertinent information, contests, give-a-ways…are great ways to enhance your database. There are also many organizations that compile consumer and business information that can be used to provided geo-demographic, lifestyle and behavioral enhancements to your data base as a value added service.

Performing each of these steps before each direct marketing campaign is good. However, performing them as part of routine processes is even better and performing them as part of an integrated marketing database solution is the best. You will need to decide which option is most sensible for your organization. In any case, having validated, standardized and corrected data is essential to driving revenue, decreasing costs and optimizing the performance of your direct marketing campaigns.