News
 10
Common Mistakes That Hurt Lists
Bill Singleton, manager of analytical services at
database marketing and consulting firm The Allant
Group, believes even the grandest strategy can fail
if you're not paying attention to your lists. Here
he lists the 10 most common mistakes to avoid losing
your customers.
Speaking earlier this month at MeritDirect's
business mailer's co-op, Singleton listed the
following 10 common mistakes that potentially lead
to ineffective promotions:
1. Suppress profanity in your customer and prospect
files. Contact center workers have been known to
replace the names of unhappy customers with
derogatory words and slurs.
2. Use the right address for your customers – don't
assume a shipping address is really an address. An
order taker may have left a delivery note such as
"Jack, leave at dock door 3 after 10 a.m." in the
address field.
3. Check your data formats so that all your files
can be integrated. For example, mixed formats from
legacy and new data systems can foil your RFM model.
4. Decide if you want to mail to contacts or
companies. Do you want to mail to 20 people in the
company, or just the potential decision-maker?
5. Check your data for gaps and aging. Data may have
not been entered in a consistent or timely basis
over the years, resulting in missing fields such as
sales info.
6. Screen and suppress for your competitors. They
aren't going to buy from you, but they would like
your business ideas.
7. Decide how to process your files: all together,
or business-to-business separate from
business-to-government.
8. Look at the reports you have – there may be
opportunities to save money if you look carefully.
Check out any numbers that may raise a red flag.
9. Be sure that the response systems your customers
are supposed to use actually work. The wrong landing
page of toll-free numbers will cause you lots of
headaches.
10. Debrief your mailing cycle, write down the
errors and successes. This will help you determine
what mailings worked and why.
---Sources:
Bill Singleton (bsingleton@allantgroup.com) and
Multichannel Merchant Magazine's List and Data
Strategies newsletter (multichannelmerchant@pbinews.com).
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Melissa Data
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