Spring (List) Cleaning

Spring is here, and it’s time to clean…your lists. If you are using your own house lists, do you have a periodic list cleaning regimen? When is the last time you deduped or applied address corrections?

Old records can costs thousands of dollars and result in lower direct marketing ROI. People move, change jobs, companies change names, etc. and your data should stay up to date so that your direct marketing budget doesn’t go to waste. Periodic deduping, address correction, and area code updates can substantially increase your hit rate.

How often should you clean your lists? There is no simple answer since this depends upon many factors including the type of list you want to clean (consumer, small business, big business, etc.), the rate of addition of new clients, attrition rate, frequency of use, and so on. Cleaning shouldn’t occur more often than you use the list. The lowest acceptable cleaning frequency may depend upon the rate of change you expect, or it can be determined by a cost/benefit analysis making some assumptions about the number of invalid leads. We will address the latter technique in a future blog entry.

Marigold offers a variety of list cleaning and maintenance services.