How to clean a dirty customer database

How many people do you know that enjoy cleaning dishes after a party or family get together?  Not many.  To me, cleaning a customer database is very similar.  It needs to be done, but not many people like doing it.  At one company where I worked, the executive management team didn’t believe in cleaning customer data.  They would just continue to buy lists without de-duping.  They would throw tens of thousands of dollars away every time they mailed a flier, brochure or catalog.  Keeping a database clean isn’t cheap, but well worth the investment.  As I suggested in my article “Clean Customer and Product Data – Your Pot of Gold”, your customer data is one of the most valuable assets that you have and you must protect it.

Here’s a process that has worked well for me that helped keep our customer database clean.  This is by no means the only database cleansing method, but it works well.

1. Create a “Key” using zip code (3 or 5 digits) and primary address (sometimes all, sometimes the first 14 characters or so).
2. The Key record will look something like “505011234MAINSTSW” while the zipcode field still reads “50501-1578” and the primary address record still reads “1234 Main Street S.W.”.  (We could still use the address information when we generated the address labels, since we know that the list will get CASS and NCOA (National Change of Address) processing by the mailer if we wanted to get any sort of postage discount.)
3. If the list hasn’t been CASS certified (Coding Accuracy Support System) yet, we would standardize the Key by doing a global search and replace on things like “Road”, “Street”, and “North”, and change them to standard postal abbreviations like “Rd”, “St”, and “N”. Then we would strip special characters from the Key: dashes, periods, commas, pound signs, and spaces.
4. When you sort by the Key, then by contact name, a formula can be written in Excel to compare addresses, and use segments of the contact name and/or company name to identify duplicates.
5. By doing visual checks of a few hundred records, you can usually tell if the formulas need to be tweaked and if additional processing of the records needs to be done.
6. Concerning demographics and customer value, we use SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) and NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) to help target customers, and tallying sales activity of defined time periods help classify the accounts.  Because we had the luxury of a SQL database, that information was stored within the database and updated as needed. We could identify the SIC or NAICS hot spots in the customer database for target marketing.
7. Phone or e-mail contact with the customer helped keep the contact list up-to-date.  Because the customer service reps would associate an order with a caller by leveraging a SQL database, we could use the data to help identify active contacts, (who placed orders, how often were orders placed, and the date of their last activity).  This activity helped pinpoint when a contact went cold, and helped us identify who to ask for when calling to clean up the list.

After cleaning up the database and before we mailed an expensive piece like a 1,000 page catalog, we would do a smaller mailing to that same list to see what got returned.  We would clean up the list using that information and then we would be ready for our mailing of a more expensive piece.

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What is the best way to market a new catalog?

There are several different ways to reach out and touch prospects and customers.  If you offer a variety of different products, you most likely have a printed catalog.  You many also offer a catalog flipper on your website.  But how do you let your customers and prospects know that your new catalog is available?

You could send postcards that are inexpensive, but unless you have a reliable, accurate database, that could be a waste of money.  An old fashioned letter via snail mail is another option.  Slim catalogs are an inexpensive way to get more information to a customer or prospect versus just a letter, but we’re back to the reliable, accurate database again.

Some marketers would deploy an email marketing campaign.  It’s significantly cheaper than print.  You can leverage your customer database with an email database you can purchase.  It has been my experience that purchasing email databases is unreliable.  How many different email addresses do you have and use?  People change email addresses all of the time.  In addition, not everyone likes or reads marketing or new catalog announcement emails, especially if they are getting bombarded by spam emails on a regular basis.

Pay-per-click, SEM/SEO and banner advertising are still viable options, but you need to be careful.  PPC can be great, but you can blow a ton of cash from your budget faster than you can say “Google Adwords”.  SEO/SEM works very well if your website is optimized.  The key is getting into the heads of your customers and prospects.  How are they searching for and finding your company on the internet?  If you know and understand that, you can build a very effective SEO/SEM strategy.

And what about using social media to get the word out?  Whether your company caters to B2B or B2C, social media is an excellent channel to tell the world about your new catalog.

Which channel is right for your business?

I have done a significant amount of work in the industrial supply market which was primarily B2B although we expanded more into the B2C space when we opened a store on Amazon.  Over the years, we have seen a migration to digital technology, but print isn’t dead by any means.  Email marketing has become an effective, inexpensive option.  Social media which was born in the B2C market is migrating to B2B.

One thing I have learned over my 20+ years of marketing is that you need to use multiple channels to touch the right prospects and customers.   Everyone has different preferences.  Some like to order online through a website, social media or an app, others use printed catalogs and 800-numbers, and others still use fax or email.  I recommend doing analysis on your customer and prospect ordering methods.  Give the customer the option to review and order your products however they want to.  With all of the digital browsing and ordering tools like smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops, and the speed in which new product information is delivered, you need to be ready to receive orders whatever what way your customers want to order.  Do B2B companies, for example, have to have a mobile version of your website?  Ask your customers.  If that’s their preferred method of searching and ordering products, then you had better build it.  If customers prefer that method, your competitors may have already figured that out.

As a firm believer in synchronized marketing, if you have a new catalog that you want to present to the marketplace, you need to use every marketing channel you can afford and more importantly, the ones which your customers and prospects prefer, and get the word out in one concise, synchronized branding message.