THE POWER OF DATA APPENDING

Direct mail campaigns are only as good as the data they are powered by. When you’re trying to stretch your marketing dollars and improve your results, high quality data can make all the difference.

HERE ARE 10 WAYS YOU CAN SAVE MONEY AND INCREASE YOUR SALES AND PROFITS BY USING HIGH QUALITY DATA:

1. Tighten your campaign criteria. If businesses have ever experienced a time to look hard at which consumers are not worth marketing to because they are not likely to respond, this is it. Consider the enormous variety of demographic, property, interest and behavior information that can help you target your marketing campaigns and achieve more precise targeting without losing significant revenue.
2. Get your mail delivered. You don’t stand a chance if your mail doesn’t arrive or if it gets returned. Be sure you are using lists that provide “marketable” records that are delivered to the right person at the right address, with only one mailing going to that recipient.
3. Be trigger-happy. With timely information about changes (“trigger events”) in consumers’ lives, clients can focus marketing budgets to pinpoint those individuals who are most likely to be in the market for a particular product based on recent life changes.
4. Append email for customer cultivation. Reach customers using email whenever possible to promote sales items or other benefits reserved for interactive relationships, to alert them of an approaching catalog or direct mail offer and to provide one-to-one communication for individualized offers. To expand your universe of customer email addresses, appending email can provide an additional 10-20% more contacts.
5. Find your sweet spots. Use a wide range of very specific niche data to reach out to highly targeted groups, from big and tall men to NASCAR fans. Marketing to a small group with known interests can deliver higher response rates and revenue at a lower cost.
6. Make more connections. For telemarketers, connecting to non-working numbers wastes time and creates unnecessary data cost. It’s important to append and verify numbers against a fresh, accurate source.
7. Use a predictive model. Customized predictive models are a great marketing tool. Some of the newest models allow marketers to evaluate a prospect’s likelihood to respond to Internet, phone and mail offers.
8. Keep it clean. Eliminate wasted mail and avoid costly mistakes and bad PR from mailing to dead people or households participating in do-not-call programs. Use high quality data hygiene – cleaning and updating your mail files to insure the best possible response to mailings.
9. Find the affluent. Household affluence factors go beyond income, net worth and home value. You can use new elements that provide a new perspective on household affluence in the U.S. market, taking into account many other factors that come into play when consumers make financial decisions. Recent tests have shown that these indicators are especially helpful in pinpointing more affluent households than normal income estimates.
10. Craft your message for your best segments. When times get tough and belts are tightening everywhere, how do you make your message compelling enough to get through the clutter? Use demographic and segmentation analysis to understand exactly which consumer households need your products and services. Find the consumer segments that are right for you and how to craft a compelling message for those households.