44. Data Hygiene & Enhancement: Boost Your ROI

Happy November, folks! It’s Rick, back again with some cases for your data you may not have considered.

Last week I sat down with Greg Good, Sr. Sales Executive over at nSightful to talk “dirty data”, the importance of data hygiene, and the shocking impact it can have on your ROI.

I was excited to chat with Greg as he’s the hard to find type; everybody thinks that data is all digital now. As you will hear, it’s not. He talked to us a little bit about some of the services that are related to direct mail that I didn’t know a lot about, and I’m assuming a lot of my data colleagues will learn a thing or two from Greg.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL

Let’s say a customer out there is a direct mailer. They’re going to send out postcards. If you bought a list from EMM (downloadable from our software tool) you could send an email to it, but is it ready to send direct mail to?

According to Greg, it’s not. With the prices of postage, can you truly afford to send mail out to unchecked addresses and/or names? What Greg and nSightful do is dedupe those contacts, and save you extra postage fees. He uses their program “Phantom Finder” on your file to look at the contact names and if they find the name on the file it’s a match. If they don’t, it’s phantom. It helps you to identify if there is really a Greg at the address or not, potentially saving you 70 cents on the postcard! If you’re on a budget and need to segment down to not send so much mail, this is especially ideal.

LEAVE US ALONE

We all know about the Do Not Call list, but is Do Not Mail a thing? According to Greg, it absolutely is. You can go to TheDMA.org (Direct Marketing Association) and follow a link to state which mailing lists you do not want to be on.

Greg shared a mind-blowing example of data hygiene that he employed for a client. A major non-profit had about 800,000-900,000 past donors on file, but they were starting to get some complaints about mailers going out to individuals that were deceased. Greg took their file, passed it against the Phantom Finder deceased file and found about 4% of the individuals listed were no longer alive. That may not seem like much at first, but 4% times 800,000, at let's figure a buck a piece for mailing, and that’s about $35,000 he saved them!

Nobody wants to take that customer service call of a widowed wife complaining about mail still coming in. That’s where decency comes in, and not only that, your business may be financially taking a huge hit like the one in the case above

ENOUGH ALREADY!

Another great case Greg mentioned involved a local retailer. They sent nSightful SIX catalogs! Greg's boss said, “Call this guy!” (As any good boss should’ve) so he called, helped them identify those duplicate addresses, and ended up saving them $7,000.

Folks, I can give Greg my personal endorsement. I don’t think I ever do this; in fact, I never have. I can give Greg my personal endorsement as far as an ethical person to trust when selecting a list. You know, obviously, if you’re not using me to buy direct dials and email). Greg’s going to help you find a great mailing list. There is no worse mistake that you can make doing direct mail than throwing money blindly into the air. When you hit Greg up for this stuff, you’ll be blown away. It's not that pricey, especially compared to the cost of returned mail. 

If you need to buy a list, or tune up a list before you send mail to it, give nSightful a call! And as always, Every Market Media is here for your emails, digital data needs, and more.

To get a hold of Greg check out the nSightful website or find him on LinkedIn.