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In this issue:
• Marketing Article: Five Must-Know Terms and Trends
• Marketing Article: 3 Ways to Improve Customer Care through Data Hygiene

This week, the USPS Commissioner approved a 2-cent increase in the price of a stamp, set to take effect in June or July. It is more important than ever to keep your address lists clean and up to date.

Our list Move Update / Cleaning Services are an all-in-one solution to make sure you do not waste postage by mailing to non-existant addresses. It includes:

Five Must-Know Terms and Trends
by Accutips.com © 2007

Every industry has its own lingo—and direct marketing seems to have a more specific language than most. Make sure you've got your definitions straight for these five key direct marketing concepts.

1. Append/Reverse Append: This data enhancement solution helps companies improve their business and consumer data, expand customer touch points and increase their response rates. There are two key types of records most businesses want to append and reverse append: email and phone.

Email append overlays deliverable email addresses onto a customer file and returns a clean, permission-based list with the highest match rates possible. If a database consists solely of email addresses, the process can be reversed, and data can be enriched with phone and postal addresses.

Phone and reverse phone append can fill in data gaps to expand customer touch points by adding customer phone numbers to databases that currently contain only emails, names, or business titles. If a database contains only phone records, the process can be reversed to obtain email and postal address records.

2. Data Hygiene: This suite of "file-cleaning" solutions can help businesses acquire exact and correct addresses, improve mail deliverability, update their files with change of address records and more. Regular data hygiene impacts the bottom line by keeping a company's data clean, capturing more clients and helping to retain existing customers. Reputable data providers usually offer a range of data hygiene solutions, including:

* Data Consolidation and Standardization
* NCOA: The National Change of Address
* MaxCOA: Maximum Change of Address
* DSF: Delivery Sequence File
* DSF: Delivery Sequence File - Second Generation
* LACS: Locatable Address Conversion System
* CASS: Coding Accuracy Support System
* Deceased Processing
* National Do-Not-Call (DNC)

3. Merge/Purge is a data process that merges two or more lists or files together and then purges the file of duplicates. This process reduces postage and printing expenses for mailers. Mailers will often rent many different lists from various sources for a single campaign; in this case, a merge/purge process is essential.

4. Data Consolidation and Standardization, as listed above, is a particular type of data hygiene. This solution ensures that your addresses are standardized to meet the United States Postal Service requirements. The process includes:

* Validation and correction of street, city and state
* Street prefix, suffix and secondary address components are standardized
* ZIP+4 Codes are enhanced, added if missing and corrected
* United States Postal Service carrier Route Codes are added
* United States Postal Service Line-of-Travel data is added
* Delivery Point Bar Code data is added
* Undeliverable and non-forwardable addresses are identified and tagged

5. Compiled, Managed and Multi-sourced Lists are among the major list types in the direct marketing industry.

A compiled list is any list created from the compilation of public sources such as phone books, deed information, directories, newspapers and courthouse records.

A managed list is a type of compiled list: one that is continually updated to capture the newest information available. It can be a complex task to make sure compiled data is accurate and compliant with all laws and regulations.

Lastly, a multi-sourced list is comprised of many different sources. Some of the most reputable data providers will keep managed b-to-b lists of the major compiled commercial databases and consumer files including the major credit bureau databases. By maintaining all of these databases under one roof, multi-source list providers have the unique ability to identify and fill gaps found within individual data sources, thus providing the most comprehensive coverage possible.

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AccuTips is a free monthly e-newsletter full of direct marketing news and legislation, strategies, how-to information, case studies, resources and more. For more information, visit www.accutips.com.

Associations and non-profit groups are a powerful resource for building and expanding networking and business opportunities, finding jobs, evaluating goods and services, and industry publications.

Our database puts you in direct contact with these organizations.

3 Ways to Improve Customer Care through Data Hygiene
by Accutips.com © 2007

In many ways, the rules of creating a great direct marketing program for your customers is a lot like those for any other project: keep things clean and efficient, keep track of the details and do a thorough job. Find out how cleaning, enhancing and filling the gaps in your house file will increase your profitsâ??and keep your customers happy too.

1) Keep a Clean List—For Your Customers' Sake

What details are missing from your database right now that could boost customer sales, prospecting and lifetime value? You may be surprised. In fact, almost every company's customer and prospect database has certain gaps:

* Phone numbers with no addresses
* Outdated information
* Valuable insight into your market area, such as flagging seasonally—occupied or vacant homes
* Missing details that could change your marketing and messaging strategies, including demographics such as homeowner, online households, presence of children, income level, marital status and more

This information (or the lack of it) clearly could be hurting your business' bottom line—but it also can have a detrimental effect on your customers' loyalty and perception of your business. Making sure your house file is complete, using data hygiene services (sometimes called "scrubbing" your file) is an important facet of any direct marketing campaign. By improving deliverability, it saves you money on printing, mail-house fulfillment, postage and more. Even more importantly, cleaning and enhancing your data is a solid, proven and valuable way to ensure that your customers are happier and more responsive.

Looking for another reason why address hygiene is so important? Studies have found that on average, up to 20% of records within a typical house file are undeliverable, seasonal or vacant. In addition, up to 5% of records are identified as small- to mid-sized businesses, which may or may not require different messaging than a consumer campaign.

2) Connect with Customers via Data Enhancement

Looking for another way to improve your customer relationships and increase the effectiveness of your house file? Take the time to learn about the people behind those records. When you know who you're dealing with, you know how best to approach them. Here's a tip: Enrich your data with appended information. Here's just a few examples of popular appends provided by the most reputable direct marketing data solutions firms:

* Add postal addresses to records that only contain email addresses. Or add phone numbers, names or business titles to your current file
* Add revealing consumer details, so that you can target your messaging for a higher response. You can find out whether your records include homeowners, parents, members of particular ethnic groups, or even customers who are connected to the Internet.
* Add revealing business details, including SIC codes, sales volume, business site type (for example, headquarters or branch office), number of employees, or contact names.

3) How Data Hygiene and Enhancement Boosts Your Bottom Line Sales Results

* Saves you money on printing and mail-house fulfillment
* Allows you to control mailing waste and save on postage
* Gives you the opportunity to target your selling messages to the right audience at the right time
* Opens up new channels to reach your consumer or business customers using the methods they prefer
* Drives higher response through more specific, personalized offers (as opposed to generic, one-size-fits-all promotions)
* Helps build loyalty programs that drive up lifetime value
* Leads to more profitable prospecting, through modeling and forecasting

Data enhancement and hygiene can open doors to new sales opportunities, make your marketing efforts more efficient and cost-effective, and help you get the most return on investment for any campaign. Most of all, it keeps your customers happy and loyal, by making their mailings more relevant and accurate.

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AccuTips is a free monthly e-newsletter full of direct marketing news and legislation, strategies, how-to information, case studies, resources and more. For more information, visit www.accutips.com.