Time for some Summer List Cleaning

In many business sectors things can quiet down during the summer period, making it the ideal time to carry out data cleansing on your marketing lists.

Data cleansing is an important and valuable exercise. Accurate data can help improve response rates and targeting for marketing campaigns and if your business is a Data Controller you have an obligation to keep your data up to date under the Data Protection Act.

Data becomes out of date all the time. Consumers can move house, relocate, opt into the Telephone or Mailing Preference Services and sadly even pass away. Business contacts can move job, businesses relocate or change ownership, open new branches or register with the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS).

You may hold many different types of mailing lists and databases within your organisation, all of which could need regular cleansing:

• Existing customers who are currently ordering from you or who have visited your premises.
• Previous or old customers, who haven’t ordered for some time.
• Leads and enquiries gathered from your marketing activities like your website.
• Lists of marketing prospects in databases you may have purchased.

Often different departments may hold the same data in different ways which can create a need for de-duplicating records, and you could also consider investing into a central CRM system which controls all your customer records across all your departments.

An easy way to clean your data is using our Easy Check list cleaning software. Just download the free software, then pay for list cleaning as you go using low cost credits.