Company: Saab Cars USA

Industry: Automotive

Challenge:
Saab Cars USA—based in Norcross, Ga.—offers a website at saabusa.com where its visitors can enter their contact information during online inquiries. The automotive firm wanted to make sure that the information it collected via its website was clean, accurate, verified, and updated, so it could contact each guest immediately after they inquire about test drives, ask for literature to be mailed, or seek visitor information about financing or certification through Saab’s website.

Solution:
Melissa Data’s Data Quality Web Service (DQWS)

Benefits:
• Saves time and labor by immediately catching web form data entry errors
• Increases opportunities to effectively follow up on inquiries for productive results
• Improves company image by enabling timely, efficient communication
• Save money by ensuring accurate follow-up response with contacts
• Helps reduce waste associated with fraudulent entries

Results:
Saab signed up for the Data Quality Web Service to validate addresses that are provided during its customers’ online inquiries. The contact information entered at saabusa.com are then verified, corrected and standardized prior to the data being transferred to Saab’s CRM warehouse or sent to its network of 230 auto dealerships.

“It is important that data we collect is a quality consumer address, so when we re-contact them we can do so effectively,” said Richard Amling, Direct Marketing Analyst in the CRM Group, Saab Cars USA.

Amling said Melissa Data’s point-of-entry verification service is ideal for Web and ecommerce applications, and especially useful in recognizing fraudulent entries.

Now, when individuals inquire about test drives, ask for literature, or seek information about financing or certification, Saab can be confident the contact data it has collected is accurate.

DQWS is a 24/7 data entry verification service that validates and corrects addresses, updates phone area codes, parses names and appends gender. The service also spots fraudulent entries such as vulgar words. Once an address is validated, a ZIP + 4® code is appended to the record. DQWS also returns latitude and longitude coordinates, which can be used to calculate distances to a dealer, store, or service location. DQWS gives business users confidence in the long-term integrity of their databases.

According to Amling, Melissa Data emerged as the best fit for Saab’s requirements for several key reasons.

“I think Melissa Data was the most responsive as well as the best fit in terms of how the process worked, and it had a very attractive price. From our perspective, it was a seamless fit [with Saab’s application environment] and within a couple of days, they worked it all out and had it running.”

Next Step: Project Open Hand
Learn more about Data Quality Web Services.