How to Get More Out of Your In-House Mailing List
Businesses build their in-house mailing lists in a variety of ways—from inputting information on a business card to capturing contact information when making a sale. Entering the data happens automatically, although often businesses only collect bits and pieces of customer information—email addresses for some, postal addresses for others, and still phone numbers for a handful. But how often is that data verified and updated? And how much of the important data is missing?
For example, we know a graphic design agency in Virginia that decided to tap into its database of 2,000 clients and prospects to do some telemarketing. But after the sales person purged the list, only 150 of the contacts were current and complete. This design agency isn’t alone: According to a DemandGen survey of B2B companies, the marketing data for 62 percent of companies is 20 to 40 percent incomplete or inaccurate.
Given that the marketing list is a critical component of any marketing and sales strategy, it makes sense that companies would want to address this issue. Yet, when asked how they would clean that data up, one-third had no strategy at all while 34% planned to have their sales team do it manually (a task that could take weeks or months, depending on the number of contacts).
Your list of current and past customers is the most powerful list you can own, but only if it’s clean and complete. Fortunately, cleaning up an in-house list is actually very simple.
Cleaning Up Your In-House List
Regular list hygiene strengthens the quality of your in-house list. Alesco Data offers a range of list hygiene services that help you get more out of your in-house mailing list. But the data you get is only as good as that of the databases being merged, so be sure to work with a reputable list brokerage that maintains pristine records. Because we update our databases regularly, you can be assured the data we append to your database is accurate. The most popular list hygiene services are:
- Email and reverse email append: Many business have a first name, last name, and postal address, but no email address. Or they have an email address with no postal address. We match this data against our business and consumer databases to fill in the missing pieces of information and opening up new channels of communication to you.
- NCOA append: People move, and they don’t always tell you they’ve done so. A National Change of Address append will ensure your customers are still at the address you have on file, and update it if they are not. You’ll get address updates over the last 48 months, including the addition of missing secondary address detail (Suite, Unit #) to business addresses.
- Phone append: If telemarketing is part of your multi-channel strategy, a phone append will locate the consumer, business and Canadian phone numbers associated with the addresses in your database.
Complete records are worth their weight in gold. With list hygiene services, you can keep your valuable in-house list working for you.