Spring Cleaning Your Customer Database
My company recently launched a new website for one of our divisions. Within the tools section is the ability for customers to subscribe to our email newsletters. Getting these requests has been eye opening.
What my customers want to receive—and what we have been sending them—is often quite different.
Reacquainting yourself with your customer database is critical to keeping your messaging responsive. If you are pulling lists again and again out of your database based on information or subscriber requests that are more than a year or two old, you might want to do some spring cleaning.
Let’s assume you are already running names through the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address database (NCOA) and certifying them through its Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) each time you do a pull for postal mailing, and removing your undeliverables/unsubscribes from your email lists and ditching long-time unresponsives from all lists. If you’re not, then this is the place you really need to start.
Depending on the type of company and customer base, another key element to consider as you clean up your list is whether there is a postbox at the location. In our case, many of our mail pieces go to businesses that often don’t have a readily available postbox in the eyes of the USPS. The address certifies, we send United Parcel Service shipments there, but the USPS sends me back “undeliverables” in droves because in their eyes there is no place to deliver my mailpiece easily. Their terminology is “no mail receptacle.” Because of this I have started updating my database to tag these locations as email only. It is just too expensive to send mail that is not going to be delivered…for whatever reason.
Another invaluable exercise is to re-examine your segmentation and decide whether or not it still suits your needs. Step back and really determine if it’s possible for you to come up with new ways to segment your data that might offer opportunities for more targeted messaging.
On our many websites we offer the ability for prospects to order our videos and brochures. We also offer our customers the ability to place orders by phone, fax or online. To facilitate marketing initiatives that coincide with new catalog launches and our new website promotions, we are pulling data based on ordering preferences. This is a great way to really narrow in on a customer or prospect knowing that they already have an interest in the subject matter.
In doing your spring cleaning exercise, take a new look at what data could be available to you in your database platform and how you can manipulate your data to work harder. You might be very surprised to see what you can come up with once you spend a few quality hours on new data layouts. It could very well open up new doors and allow you to present your goods or services to fresh eyes.
Lastly, be sure to setup an ongoing program of data cleansing for your company as well as a solid system for gathering new pristine data. Your success depends on your customer data. Having strong, reliable information that’s updated and scrutinized regularly will be your key not only to springtime success but year-long prosperity.
Carol Lustig is marketing director for Sonny’s Enterprises, a direct marketer of automotive aftermarket products.
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