Last month we talked about how using de-duping and appending services can refresh your mailing lists, cutting down on marketing costs every time you email the list.
This time, more detail on the different ways of updating a mailing list.
Below is a four-step process we can follow with your marketing data and you can bow out of the process at any point, thereby controlling your spend but always ending up with a better list than when you started.
1. First up is the cheapest: verifying at 5p per contact. You email over your data, we run it against our up-to-date mailing lists and are left with two files. The first is of data that we know to be correct; the second is of data that did not match our own and so may be incorrect. We put the first file aside as ‘good data’.
2. We run the second file of suspect data against our Leavers Database, a database of 150,000 company directors and managers who have left a job since 2007. This cuts the file down to size again and is charged at 5p per removed contact. We know these contacts are incorrect, so these are discarded. You might consider telephone research to update these records, if your campaign deadlines and marketing budget allow.
3. Missing data fields; if the mailing list file is missing contact names, email addresses or phone numbers, we can add those in. Price 40p per new contact name. Or if we do not have the missing names, we can telephone the companies and research the new contact for you for £1.50 per name.
4. More contacts please: by now your file is looking fitter but smaller and is probably missing some key players. Brief us on the types of companies and job titles you are looking for and we’ll run a search on our database. We’ll find extra contacts that fit your brief. Naturally, we’ll run our data against yours so that you only pay for the new contacts added. Price 40p per addition.
So what are the downsides to this process. Firstly we are only using computers. No de-dupe software can pick up every error that your own human eye can pick up. The question is, would you rather wade through the data yourself, or give the job to a computer? A human eye, a sharp telephone researcher and a data inputter will get you closer to your perfect list, but will take far more time and budget.
There is no such thing as the perfect list (even if you do the work yourself). If you are a perfectionist, use a de-duping and appending service as a starting point and then scrutinise the data yourself, making corrections and taking out people and companies that you do not wish to contact, before you use it. At this point you might hire someone to telephone research the list for you. We can do this for £1.50 per contact.
Our final (and most popular) option is a complete file update. If you've bought a mailing list from us within the previous 12 months, you can ask for the same specification and pay a reduced price:
List bought within last 6 months 75% discount of total price
List bought within last 12 months 50% discount of total price.
Our page on de-duping and appending mailing lists gives you more details. Or to take us up on any of these data services, call David Evans on 020 7419 7999 or email lists@electricmarketing.co.uk