Data Appending. The Devil is in the Details.

Dear Prospect,

You called me last week about appending email addresses or phone numbers to your house list.

"Can you do it?" You asked innocently.

"Certainly!" I responded.

"What will my 'hit rate' be?" You asked.

"Arrrrrgh!" I thought, thinking to myself that this obvious question is as difficult to answer accurately as the other slow-death-by-quicksand question "What will my response rate be?"

I took a deep breath. Here we go again. I'm dealing with someone who wants an absolute number—almost a performance guarantee—in an area that has so many variables that any answer I give him will be wrong.

I thought about your question for quite a while before I spoke again. Here are some of the thoughts that were racing through my head in those 10 seconds of silence:

How fresh is your data? How often do you update? If we're trying to append information on data that is even 5 years old, lotsa luck!

Do you want the data to match to name only? To name and address? To name and zip code? To multiple "touch points"?

What about name variations? Maybe you have "Joe and Mary Smith" in your data. What about "Joseph and Mary Smith" or "Joseph L. and Mary A. Smith"? or "Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Smith" or any of a dozen other ways this name could be presented? How do you want to address this issue?

What do you need? Do you have specific goals and needs? If you've got a specific end-game, please let me know. I can help you better if you give me more information.

You didn't have any answers for me, but I kept slogging on.

Are you willing to invest time and money to bring your data up to snuff if it needs to be done?

How many passes are you willing to pay for to get the output you want? Are you willing to test vendors to see which produces the best outcome for you? After all, not all data files are created equal.

What are your expectations? If we get a 30% match is that OK? 60%? Or is nothing less than 100% acceptable? So much of our success will be dependent on your data. So much of your happiness over the results will be based on your expectations going into the process.

So here I am, on the horns of a dilemma. We can do what you want, but I know that you want an absolute number that you can plug into an equation that will prove (or disprove) the efficacy of the effort.

I can try to educate you about the process, yet the largest variable in the entire equation is your data. You're asking me to give you a project cost and a performance guarantee based on something that you know more about than I do.

The call ended with you saying (not too convincingly) that you'd get back to me. I fear I shattered your preconception that this would be an easy-in easy-out conversation. And it wasn't.

I hope you do call back. But I fear you've gone to someone who would give you a glib (and useless) answer.

I'll be waiting.

Down in the Data Dumps

Data drives marketing. Without good data you got nuthin’. So having good, clean data is vital to having great results from your marketing. Strange isn’t it, then, that so many people spend so little effort to clean their data.

And yes, I’m talking to you. Lest you get cocky about how good your data is, consider these abysmal statistics:

• 23.6% of all mail sent in the US is addressed inaccurately (USPS). At Paul&Partners we routinely NCOA our client’s data (ie run it against the National Change of Address databank). It’s amazing how much can go so terribly wrong in three little lines. Yet anyone who has ever had an NCOA knows there are 49 reasons why an address can fail. Failure should not be an option when a fix is so cheap and easy.
• And it isn’t getting better. The quality of US addresses decline by 17% each year (USPS). So you don’t learn from your mistakes, huh? You keep sending out marketing materials to bad lists. That’s the classic definition of insanity: Doing the same thing and hoping for different results. ‘Nuf said.
• Internal duplication rates of up to 20% are not uncommon (Dun & Bradstreet). Unless you’re as wealthy as Croesus, sending out duplicate messages is just plain stupid. Assuming you’ve got a limited marketing budget, wouldn’t you want to send your message to as many people as possible? Why irritate one person with two messages when you can irritate two people with your message? The very thought makes me irritable, too.
• 42% of businesses make no effort to measure data quality (the Information Difference). 42% of you are staking your future on what is effectively a blind data date. You don’t ask and you can’t tell. Just think how much higher your ROI could be if you were approaching someone who wanted and needed what you had to offer. It’s simply common sense. But as someone wisely said, common sense is so uncommon.
• US businesses waste more than $600 billion each year due to defective data. (TDWI)
  Let me count the ways: wasted postage, wasted printing, wasted labor, wasted click charges, wasted deployment fees. Squandered opportunity, over and over again. My Puritanical ancestors are spinning in their simple pine boxes.

C’mon guys. Get with the program! Reclaim your share of that $600 billion. No matter what vehicle you are using to distribute your marketing materials—whether by mail or by electrons—if it’s not going to the right people, you are wasting money. Your money.

Do not Call... Do not Fax... Now Do not Track?

Those of you who think cookies are delicious little treats that add inches to waistlines, can stop reading right here. You are so far behind the times that you’re a living fossil.

But if you know that “cookies” is the computer term for software that tracks individuals as they meander around in the web universe, then maybe you ought to read on.

If you have a website that tracks who has been visiting, where they went on your site and how long they stayed on each page, then you should read on.

If you share/sell/rent your website data, then you must read on.

The Federal Trade Commission is considering a “do-not-track” registry similar to the Do Not Call list that still plagues telemarketers and brought a once noble (but awfully annoying) industry to its knees.

Equating online tracking to virtual stalking, the proposed registry would allow consumers to demand that their personal browsing proclivities be protected from prying eyes of Big Brother advertisers. Thus individuals would gain more control over how their personal information is collected and used.

Nice idea, but is it do-able? Enforceable? Geekier heads than mine are pondering those philosophical and practical issues.

There is also talk of self-regulation (like that idea ever works! Just ask Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns).

The proposed Best Practices Act, introduced in July, asks websites to seek opt-in permission from consumers before sharing their data with third parties. The legislation does, however, exempt companies that purport to self-regulate. Whatever that means. The door is still ajar, and there are those who will figure out how to squeeze through the tiny opening.

Just how the registry would work is to be determined. And just how the personal cloak-of-invisibility would work is also to be determined.

It is likely that privacy legislation will be debated in Congress after the elections. It is just as likely that industry trade groups will be loud in their response.

Expect a long and loud discussion. After all, crystal ball gazers predict that online advertising will exceed 17% of all advertising dollars by 2014. There is simply too much money at stake for either side to give up without a fight.