Direct Marketing 101: Data
Part two of a new blog series.
In Direct Marketing, data plays a crucial component to measuring the success of a campaign. How is it collected? Processed? Received? Our data helps garner our results and tells us what worked, what didn’t work, and what we can do next to improve on the next campaign. In our second blog post on DMAW’s DM 101, hear what key industry leaders thoughts are on data, and how it can help interpret and support the results from your campaigns.
Lori Barao, Manager of Operations, MMI Direct
Data Hygiene/Data Processing
• Deceased records: The surprising reality is that mailings to deceased individuals often have a solid response rate. Perhaps the surviving spouse wants to continue to contribute to organizations that the couple used to support together. Test to determine what’s right for your organization.
• Proprietary Change of Address: PCOA, while not required by the USPS, can extend the reach of NCOA by ~3%
• Temporary Moves: Many people file a temporary change of address with the Post Office when they take a long vacation or move south for the winter. You might want to exclude these records from your mailing especially if you’ve NCOA’d immediately prior to the mail date. Test before making the mail/no mail decision.
• Quality control: QC checkpoints should be performed after each step of the processing. Expect your service provider to proactively investigate all data anomalies and present their findings to you.
• MP Optimization: Using MP Optimization, you can improve your ROI by omitting prospects who are not likely to respond to your acquisition campaign. Replace them with prospects who ARE likely to respond. You’ll acquire more new donors and enjoy incremental campaign revenue.
Robb Wanner, Director of Marketing, Direct Mail Processors
Data Capture and Caging
• Make sure that whoever is entering the credit card information is PCI DSS compliant.
• Make sure you are taking advantage of Image Cash Letter.
• Make sure you are seeding your lockbox partner.
• Make sure you have access to the images of your checks and replies
• Make sure you are investing in a solid acknowledgement program.
• Make sure you never take your donors for granted.
• Pray for the folks that work at the Postal Service. They need it.
Don’t miss out! Our third and last blog post in the series highlights Analytics, Online Marketing and Telefundraising. And there is still time to register for DM201 – just click here.