Overcoming Database Decay
Overcoming database decay and rekindling Alumni connections is undeniably a critical topic for Canadian Alumni professionals. Addressing this issue head-on ca dramatically improve alumni efforts and offer long-term benefits for institutions.
Why It Happens
- People die, move, change jobs, relocate, get new email addresses or phone numbers, and even change their names. Over time, this means that the contact information you originally collected will be incorrect.
Impact of Database Decay
- Reduced Effectiveness: As your database decays, the effectiveness of your marketing or outreach campaigns will drop because you’re reaching out to outdated contacts or sending information to old addresses.
- Resource Wastage: Money, time and environmental resources are wasted in tryin to engage with outdated leads or contacts.
- Potential Reputation Damage: Sending communications to the wrong addresses or irrelevant parties can harm your reputation. It might seem to recipients that you’re not keeping up with their life changes, which can come off as negligence or lack of genuine interest.
Rate of Decay
- The rate varies depending on the demographics of your audience and other factors, however, most studies suggest a decay rate of 20% per year. This means that if no action is taken to clean and update the database, nearly all of it will be outdated within 5 years.
Mitigation
- Regular Cleaning: Periodically assess and clean the database to remove or update outdated entries.
- Validation Tools: Use tools that can validate details like emails or phone numbers in real time.
- Feedback Mechanisms: Allows your contacts to easily update their information. This can be done through portals, profile update reminders, or even through regular feedback forms.
- Data Enrichment: Employ third-party services that can help fill in gaps or update decayed information.
Cleanlist works with educational fundraising professionals ensuring their contact database is up to date as possible. Our solution is platform agnostic, so it works with all software systems and offers these features:
- Address Correction
- Mover Updates
- Contact Locate
- Deceased Flagging
- Phone Number Lookup
- Email Validation
- Demographic and Lifestyle Enrichment
- Donation History Enrichment
- Duplicate Check
To learn more about Cleanlist’s service, schedule a 30-minute virtual appointment with our experts. Make sure to ask about our free data assessment report card.
