List Cleansing, a Necessary Evil for Businesses

List Cleansing

Known to some as list validation or list verification, all businesses MUST do list cleansing.  It is essential to be efficient and cost effective for

1. a) Marketing,
2. b) Distribution of information
3. c) Billing.

B2B MARKETING:  When you are dealing with contacts in areas of a business that experience a high turnover, especially in large organizations, it would be ideal to verify your data just prior to the launch of your marketing effort.  The effectiveness of a marketing effort is greatly reduced if 20 percent of the prospects you are targeting are no longer in the position you want to reach.  Either he/she has moved on to another position in the company or outside the company, or has retired altogether.  This is where a list cleansing effort can ensure that you are marketing your product or service to 100% of the contacts you have targeted.

B2C DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION: If your goal is to contact and inform your existing customer base of a change in policy, ideally, you should be able to say with confidence that 90 percent of your customer data is accurate. Leaving your customer service department to deal with the fallout from the 10 percent that call in after the fact to state that they were not duly advised of a change in policy. This type of data should be refreshed twice a year if possible.

B2C BILLING: Imagine you are sending out billing statements to 50,000 customers on a monthly basis. If you are not cleansing your list at least on a yearly basis, probably upwards of 10 percent of your customer database contains customers who have:

• Closed their account
• Passed away
• Moved
• …

The cost to process, print and mail each of these statements are $10.00 each.  $50,000 a month becomes a costly line item to any company’s bottom line not to mention the cost to the environment.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

ABOUT IDEA FACTOR

Idea Factor provides a full suite of marketing services including B2B lead generation (gathering qualified sales leads), surveys, data mapping, event tele-boosting, trade show follow up, in-bound and out-bound omnichannel contact center services, data cleansing, list cleaning, customer retention and loyalty programs.

Our commitment to excellence in customer service has awarded us repeat business for more than 25 years, from both our global and community clients. To find out more go to http://www.idea-factor.com or look at our Services here.