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.

Gotta love NCOA

You can’t live with it. And you can’t mail without it.

I have to admit: We’re good do-bees. When the USPS says thou shalt NCOA all addresses before you mail, that’s what we do. But what is it really doing for our clients?

NCOA—National Change of Address—checks the validity of addresses on a datafile. It answers the questions (1) is the address accurate? and (2) does that individual/business still reside there?

OK. What constitutes an “accurate address”? NCOA gives more than 40 reasons why an address can fail. Some are fatal like a state abbreviated AM (what the heck is that?)…some are mere inconveniences like “Street” instead of “St”…and most errors are somewhere in the middle.

If you’re like most clients, once you get over the shock of potentially having 40 blunders in three simple lines of type, you start to determine how many precious records have fatal flaws…how many addresses are readily fixable (and who are you going to assign to do the heavy lifting)...and how many do you throw the dice on and “takes your chances.”

After you’re over that emotional and logistical hurdle, things get easier. NCOA now tells you if the intended recipient still resides there.

Sounds pretty black-and-white, doesn’t it: Yes, he does or No, he doesn’t. But of course it’s more complicated than that.

IF the person has moved within the US and IF the person has given the USPS a forwarding address and IF the address is typed accurately (human error creates a lot of bad data), then NCOA will tell you where to find that person. Maybe.

IF he’s a college student and has left home to study, maybe you can find him. IF he’s moved out and she’s still in the home, then maybe NCOA can track him down. IF he’s moved to Heavenly Acres Cemetery, then he’s probably left no forwarding address.

That’s a lot of “ifs.”

So you clean up the data you can, expunge the records you must, and do the mailing.

That’s exactly what our client, Jane, did. Only she put an endorsement line on her envelopes, requesting the post office to return all undeliverable mail.

Now Jane has six mail tubs of envelopes with USPS-affixed yellow stickies proclaiming No such address …Undeliverable as addressed … No Forwarding address and the like.

These addresses had all passed through the rigors of NCOA just days before. Yet a large percentage of the mail was clearly undeliverable.

We were commiserating over lunch about the problem.

“How long does it take to get an address change into the NCOA datafile?” she asked me.

“How can an address pass NCOA on Monday and be undeliverable on Friday?”

“Does a sticker that reads ‘Undeliverable as addressed’ really mean that? Or did the harried clerk pick a sticker at random and slap it on my letter? I’m pretty sure this letter got to the recipient before. What gives?”

Frankly, we don’t know what gives, so we called our regional postal authority to answer some of Jane’s many questions. Here’s what we learned:

* It takes 3-4 days to get an address change listed in the NCOA if someone fills out and mails the yellow address forwarding forms found at every post office.

* It takes about one hour and $1 if the person submits the information online. (The USPS sends a confirming letter—hence the $1 fee.)

* Sticker fatigue? Well, maybe. We looked at the returned envelopes and saw what looked to be good addresses. Each envelope had been read by a postal scanner to check for why the address was in error, and that information was compared to The Big Database in the Sky.

Address order could have caused some of the come-backs. Sometimes the address was 123 Apple Ave T1 (apartment T1) which is the correct addressing format. Sometimes the address was T1 123 Apple Avenue. That second presentation could have confused the smartest USPS computer.

* A couple of the envelopes had someone’s nickname. The computer doesn’t know that Robert is also called Bob, Rob, Bobbie and Robbie. Nicknames can lead to computer confusion.

* And since so many of Jane’s returns were from college students, we can assume that they didn’t bother to register when they changed housing each semester. Records older than 24 months can make the computer reject an address, too.

* Finally, the ubiquitous response: human error. Not infrequently, the USPS hardcopy change of address form is not readable. The USPS keypunchers are left to take educated guesses on spelling. Guesses lead to inevitable errors. Similarly, people who enter their information online make typing errors. Those errors can result in rejected mail later.

Want to check an address? The USPS suggests you to go their website: www.USPS.com. In the upper left corner click on Zip Code look up. Follow the steps and you’ll find out why the USPS computers have rejected that specific address. Maybe.

Whew! Now Jane’s got her answers. But she’s still got six mail tubs to sort through, ensuring her clerk will have job security for weeks.

I repeat: Gotta love NCOA. You can’t live with it and you can’t mail without it.

Get Personal. Get Results. (Part 3 of 4)

Get Personal. Get Results. (Part 3 of 4)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Getting Personal With Housefiles

If direct marketing prospecting is a lot like dating as you sort out whom to approach and how to approach them, direct marketing housefile work is doubly difficult. It’s like being married.

You think you know what makes the person tick…and then voila’…he changes. Yesterday he liked meat and potatoes, followed up with cigars and cognac. Today he is tofu and salads, followed up with spring water and a sprig of mint.

But before we agree to change and grow old together, let’s define where we start the journey. If marriages start at the altar, a housefile starts to build when a prospect says “I do” to your proposal to buy/donate/subscribe, etc.

Hence a housefile is a list of people who like what you do and have supported you. Your organization/company owns and (hopefully) maintains this list. These are people who have donated to your cause, bought from your company, attended your events, subscribed to your publication, joined your organization, or in some way have entered into your sphere. You own these names.

Since you own these names, you’ve got more at stake here. They should be your “bread and butter” since they’ve already opted in at least once before. When you’ve got something to pitch, these should be you’re A#1 go-to-guys. They should know who you are, what you do, and why you are contacting them.

Or maybe not.

You have been sending them marketing pieces that explain your position. Right? You have been asking them to renew. Right again?

Despite your best efforts, brilliant copy and compelling graphics, your housefile returns have been dwindling of late, and you can’t figure out why. (This is the moment when that beef-loving, cognac-sipping spouse says “You’ve totally misunderstood me!”)

But before that ugly wake-up call, consider that maybe you don’t know who they are, why they are on your list or how you should contact them. If this is the case, it is a huge opportunity for you to research your own base so you can get personal with them to the best effect.

In days of yore, you would keep contacting your housefile with the same message over and over again. They would continue to support you, or—in 20% of the typical housefile each year—they would vote with their feet, and leave you behind.

Today there is a lot more competition for their attention. You’ve got to be better—smarter!—than the competition. Unless you know more about who is on your housefile, unless you know what they value, what they believe and think, you may be pitching the wrong message to them.

Maybe their first foray with your company was a fluke or a momentary aberration. (That spray-on hair-in-a-can surely did look great at 2:00 in the morning!) But maybe it was really part of their core values. (They are among the 400,000 balding men in this country who are desperate to find a “cure.”)

You keep trying to sell more hair-in-a-can to the poor guy. But you’re totally missing the deeper need.

Today, you can run your housefile through data filters. You can understand your folks better, and determine what compels them. Then you can understand how to address them.

For instance, a very basic filter is an NCOA—National Change of Address. NCOA runs your data through the most current USPS-approved data to ascertain if your address of record is good, and if your person still lives there.

If there is a problem with the address—(and NCOA will give you almost 40 reasons why an address can fail. Some are fatal, some are merely inconvenient)—NCOA will let you know. If your addressee has moved, NCOA will tell you where they’ve moved if USPS knows. If a business has closed, NCOA will tell you.

You can go a little deeper by running your data against Social Security data. Often “Forwarding Address Unknown” means your party has taken up permanent residence in Heavenly Acres. Running your data against Social Security data will tell you. If he is deceased, there is no point in keeping him on your housefile. The likelihood of him purchasing/donating/subscribing to you any more is nil. He is truly deadwood.

There are other filters, too, that might be invaluable to you. If there’s a possibility your folks may have found their way to a long-term, involuntary residence at Leavenworth, then run your data against prison data.

If knowing the likely net worth or annual income of individuals on your housefile is important to you, we can find out.

If you need to know his hobbies, interests, politics, marital status, etc, the information is there for you.

If knowing that he is losing his hair because he has cancer and is likely in chemotherapy, you can find that out, too. This information is available. For a price.

If you do nothing to find out about your housefile, you’re likely to lose 20% of them each year to moving, changes in their financial situation, and changing interests/motivations.

If you proactively try to learn something about them, you can keep more of them on your active roster because you can address your marketing materials to them specifically, thus building and reinforcing the relationship that you need to have with your housefile.

Here is how several of our clients have used personalization technologies to improve their response rates:

Case Study #1. This non-profit organization helping third world orphans had not cleaned its housefile in over 50 years. Simply by doing a merge/purge to remove duplicate records, then running those addresses through NCOA and Social Security, we were able to determine within days why their response rates were dropping even as their production costs were rising.

Some donors were in the data six times. Hence, every time the organization mailed, these donors would receive 6 messages. At best, 5 would go ignored. At worst, the donors thought the organization was wasting money. And the donors were right!

That is, the donors who were still alive.

After running 153,000 records through Social Security, we had a housefile of about 28,000 unduplicated, still living donors. Only about 18% of their housefile was viable!

The client was devastated. They were sure we had destroyed their fundraising base. When we mailed it, we found something else instead. Printing, production and postage costs plummeted; and return rates skyrocketed. Their ROI improved instantaneously.

But wait! There was more! We asked the client to make a leap of faith by changing their packaging, too.

Instead of mailing one-size-fits-all generic letters with generic asks in window envelopes, we opted for the more expensive but vastly more productive approach of sending personalized letters in closed face envelopes. And of course, we used real stamps.

Hence instead of asking everybody for a gift of $25, $50, $100 or Other $____, we asked for donations commensurate with previous donating history. We also asked donors to increase their giving level, using a simple algorithm. $5 givers were asked to give $5 or upgrade to $7.50 or $10; $100 donors were asked to give $100, $150, $200.

We also learned a little something about each person on the file, so we could personalize the solicitation specifically to that recipient. Was he donating because he was a foster parent to one of the orphans? We mentioned the child by name. Had she visited the orphanage in 2005? We mentioned her visit. Have they been giving since 1995? We mentioned that little fact, too.

The results were astounding. $50 donors upgraded to $100 donors. Multi-givers became the rule, not the exception. Donors responded with personal notes, thanking the organization for the opportunity to help the children.

Bottom line: Several factors played into this success story.
#1- list maintenance.
#2- researching and using information about the donor in his individual letter.
#3- using personalization technology like laser-personalized letters and match mailings (where the recipient’s name and address on the envelope match the name and address on the letter) to create a truly one-on-one experience for each donor.

Case Study #2. A political client sent a solicitation letter to his housefile. In that individually personalized letter, the candidate reiterated his position on various issues, and he thanked each donor for his/her previous gift of $x. He enclosed a small, four-color photograph of himself, his wife, their children and their dog in front of their home. Scrawled across the lower right corner of the picture was the personalized message in blue handwriting, “Dear Joe and Mary, your gift of $x meant the world to Joanne and me. Thank you.” It was “signed” by the candidate.

A simple thank you scrawled on a photo. It didn’t cost much, but the personalized message got attention in a big way.

VDP—Variable Data Printing—made the photo and the message a simple one-step process. Matching the photo to the letter to the reply to the envelope, made it 4-way match mail. It was a personalization tour de force.

Within days, gifts were pouring in. And so were photos of Joe, Mary and their family. By the time the last photo arrived, the staff had wallpapered a room with photos of their supporters, and the campaign went on to victory.

Several factors working together created this success story:

#1- The politician realized that people like to be thanked. And if he can thank them citing their previous gift, it’s even better! It helped reinforce the relationship that is at the heart of every housefile.
#2- Sending the photo of his family made this man real to his audience.
#3- Adding the personal thank you—naming the recipient by name, and citing his specific gift amount—locked in the relationship.

Case Study #3. Another political candidate we helped was running in an ethnically diverse district. There were pockets of Korean speakers; Arabic speakers; Spanish speakers, Vietnamese speakers.

So we ran an ethnicity filter against the district voter file and found out who likely spoke Korean, Arabic, Spanish, or Vietnamese as their first language.

We then prepared materials for each group using appropriate photographs, graphics and language for each. We had skilled translators change the original message in English into the various language groups, and we laser personalized letters to these voters explaining why they should vote for this candidate.

Each voter got several colorful packets of material written in his native language.

For many of these voters, this may have been their first American election. It set a high bar for future efforts.

What does this mean to you?

We'll address that issue in Part IV of this series.

Get Personal. Get Results. (Part 3 of 4) Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

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