Is Your Data Green?
The green trend has even infiltrated data and analytics - here are a couple of stories (from Multichannel Merchant and eCommerce Times) that discuss the environmental impact of the direct mail industry and provide pointers about how you can keep your customer databases green.
More and more companies are starting to pay attention to the massive environmental costs (trees, energy, greenhouse gases, etc.) of "producing, distributing and disposing of direct mail solicitations." This answers demands coming in from "customers, employees, partners, shareholders (and) policymakers."
What can you do about it? First, you need to minimize returned catalogs by cleansing, integrating and analyzing your databases to eliminate address duplications and errors. There are a number of technologies out there that can help you achieve this goal, such as customer data integration solutions.
Second, personalize your mailings by targeting them based on past purchases, demographics and other data. This method not only eliminates waste by ensuring that customers receive only the most relevant content, it also drives cross-sell and up-sell effectiveness and saves printing and postage costs.
To help companies gain the dual benefit of helping shareholders achieve their financial objectives while mitigating their impact of their direct mail activities on the environment., the DMA will be releasing a set of "environmental action steps" that include:
Posted by Universal Ad
More and more companies are starting to pay attention to the massive environmental costs (trees, energy, greenhouse gases, etc.) of "producing, distributing and disposing of direct mail solicitations." This answers demands coming in from "customers, employees, partners, shareholders (and) policymakers."
What can you do about it? First, you need to minimize returned catalogs by cleansing, integrating and analyzing your databases to eliminate address duplications and errors. There are a number of technologies out there that can help you achieve this goal, such as customer data integration solutions.
Second, personalize your mailings by targeting them based on past purchases, demographics and other data. This method not only eliminates waste by ensuring that customers receive only the most relevant content, it also drives cross-sell and up-sell effectiveness and saves printing and postage costs.
To help companies gain the dual benefit of helping shareholders achieve their financial objectives while mitigating their impact of their direct mail activities on the environment., the DMA will be releasing a set of "environmental action steps" that include:
- Merge/purge thoroughly by matching against outside lists, house lists and suppression files.
- Ensure accuracy of all incoming names by using Zip Code correction, address standardization, NCOA data, etc.
- Subject outside lists to the same hygiene standards as a house list.
- Provide mechanisms that allow recipients to modify or eliminate direct mail.
- Utilize predictive models and segmentation.
Posted by Universal Ad
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