Why you should spring clean your business data.

Since the introduction of GDPR in May 2018, data cleansing and data handling have never been more important for any business wishing to acquire & stay in touch with its customers.

What does Data mean?

GDPR defines Data as:

"any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person... such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors..." [i]

Typical personal data that your business might hold about your customers could be:

• Names,

• Addresses,

• Emails,

• Telephone numbers,

• Bank details

Data is an invaluable tool - Using it correctly is how your business could target & communicate with your current and prospective customers helping to grow your brand.

Why you should update and clean your data?

By cleansing your data you're not wasting time, money & resources contacting those who no longer want to hear from you or whose circumstances have changed.

It also ensures you are fully compliant with GDPR as it stipulates that "personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date [ii]" and "every reasonable step must be taken [iii]" in implementing this.

What are the benefits of data cleansing?

Save money and reduce waste

Keeping your data up to date with all the correct information will ensure you are communicating effectively with your customers. Removing those customers who will never see your communications due to changes in personal circumstances will increase the quality and in turn your ROI.

Better targeting and results

With accurate data, you can now begin targeting your campaigns more successfully. As well as ensuring all address' are correct for a high delivery rate you can go even further.

From your data, you can profile your customers to help identify new prospective customers. From geodemographic profiling to mosaic profiling you can find more like-for-like customers as well as understanding your current customers.

Building a good reputation

Having a consistent data cleanse will ensure you are implementing a good practice into your business. It will also ensure you are sending direct mail to the correct people who want to receive it. They are also more likely to engage with it. Avoiding sending to those who have moved address or passed away. Which would be damaging to your brand.

How we can help with your data?

We offer our customers a free data health check, helping identify the quality of your data and the quantity of your healthy data.

With data cleansing, we can remove duplicate records, clean addresses using intuitive data cleansing. This will correct spelling mistakes or abbreviations and even 'fill in the blanks' of missing data where possible.

In addition, we can use suppression matching on request. This will compare your data to specific files to tell you who not to mail and the reason why. It can also update address' of those who have moved to their new address.

We can compare your data to the following external files and act accordingly:

• National Change of Address Update (NCOA)

• National Change of Address Suppression (NCOA)

• The Gone away Suppression File (GAS)

• The National Deceased Register (NDR)

• The Bereavement Register (TBR)