Don’t fall prey to
the perils of bad data

Problem:

Moving to a new apartment, or buying your first home:  these moments involve the purchase of new furniture– and as a national supplier of fine furniture, the client was looking for ways to be top-of-mind for Canadians about to undergo these purchasing events. So instead of randomly blanketing entire neighbourhoods with flyers and pamphlets with the knowledge that most of that expense would go to waste, the client needed a way to target specific households, which had either moved recently, or were about to move.

Diagnosis:

In order to precision-target these particular customers, a buyer profile was created.  Cleanlist then used this profile to query our ResponseCanadaTM database and identify households which were either about to move, or who were on the move, within 40km of the client’s fifty-plus locations.

Solution:

The client hired Cleanlist to provide updated, cleaned and formatted, precision-targeted mailing lists on a monthly basis, consisting of households either about to move, or who were on the move– for each of their fifty-plus locations. With this unique and valuable targeting information available only with Cleanlist, the client was able to run timely, relevant, ongoing direct marketing campaigns.  The ability to directly target potential customers at the moment they are most likely to buy improved the client’s ROI significantly.

Achievements:

• Reduced costs and waste from over-printing, postage, and delivery
• Improved response rates from timely, targeted messaging
• Better ROI from targeted direct mail campaigns

Key Results:

• Acquisition of new customers
• Increase in total furniture sales
• Increased foot traffic to retail stores
• Increased visits to website

Problem:

The client's extensive loyalty program was not reaching many of their customers. Thousands of letters, emails, and telephone calls weren't getting through to their intended recipients. This resulted in disappoint- ed customers, lost revenues and missed opportunities.

Diagnosis:

The client's customer loyalty database was huge, but it was filled with errors resulting from system migra- tions, business acquisitions, and a lack of proper maintenance over the years. Contact data formatting problems, duplicate records, field omissions and inaccuracies— all prevented the client from running effective loyalty communications programs. Response rates were low, returned mail was high— messages were bouncing, and calls went unanswered. Intelligent, segmented, customer targeting was particularly difficult. Unless these customer data problems were solved, the client's customer loyalty program would continue to suffer.

Solution:

Cleanlist performed an exhaustive assessment of the client's data. Custom routines were written to parse, format, and consolidate the client's numerous customer databases. Errors and inconsistencies were corrected, duplicates removed, and the structure of the data was optimized. With a new, clean benchmark for their customer data in place, Cleanlist was then able to enhance the data with current, up-to-date addresses, phone numbers, and more.

Achievements:

• Multiple databases were formatted, cleaned and consolidated
• Contact information was updated and verified for accuracy
• Missing contact data was appended with up-to-date information
• Regular updates and maintenance provided for ongoing database health

Key Results:

• Improved postal accuracy of client's customer database from 40% to 90%
• Identified and corrected the nearly 10% of customers who had moved
• Identified and updated thousands of records for customers who had deceased

Problem:

Direct mail had been a well-established and effective fundraising technique for this national not-for-profit organization, but gift rates were on the decline and expenses were steadily increasing due to higher postage costs. Further, the donor database contained a large number of inactive donors from years past that was no longer profitable to mail.

Diagnosis:

Cleanlist did an analysis of the entire donor database with a focus on data quality and the profile of active loyal donors. It found that despite having used Blackbaud’s address correction National Change of Address (NCOA) service, a significant number of donors didn’t reside at the address they had. This was especially true for inactive donors who achieved a validation rate of only 35%. The Cleanlist team also modelled the active donors and segmented them using the Prizm clustering system.

Solution:

The client hired Cleanlist to identify lapsed donors that could be verified to reside at the address on file and then rank them in order of priority using the active donor profile. The client then created a direct mail campaign to reactivate this higher potential segment. The Cleanlist team also flagged the current and lapsed donors that failed to verify at the address on file. The client developed a telemarketing campaign to reach this group and request a current mailing address. A follow-up mailer was sent to the updated records that included an appealing offer.

Achievements:

• The mailing to verified lapsed donors was very profitable and the most successful in its history.
• 25% of addresses were updated through the telemarketing campaign.
• Donations from the active segment increased by 10% by correcting the non-verified addresses.

Key Results:

• Reactivated lapsed donors
• Reduced mailing costs
• Increased number of active donors
• Increase in overall donation gifts received