±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Can you believe data cleaning is still an issue in this mature,

professional and sophisticated industry?

It may not be as sexy as a stunning piece of creative; or as

mind-blowing as a piece of analysis that gets right under the skin of

the target audience.

But there aren't many processes which can save money, improve customer

relations and minimise your chances of appearing on Watchdog. Yes, we

all know it - mailing addressed to a dog or that biggest faux pas, 'Dear

Deceased'.

Data cleaning can solve all of this. And since the transitional period

of the Data Protection Act (1998) expired on 23 October, 2001, it can

also prevent you being named, shamed and fined by the Information

Commissioner (formerly the Data Protection Commissioner). Surely data

cleaning is a no-brainer?

Of course it's impossible to find any direct marketer who would deny

this. But like all those who denied intending to vote Tory right up

until they stepped into the polling booth back in the 80s, their actions

don't always match their words.

Anecdotal and statistical evidence constantly undermines the industry's

claims to take data cleaning seriously. "My home address is listed on

the Mailing Preference Service," says Antony Allen, general manager of

Datacare. "But I still receive about 60 per cent of the direct mail I

used to - most of which is from the major banks, the industry's biggest

mailers." Meanwhile, research from The REaD Group shows the industry

spent £16 million mailing dead people last year alone.

This isn't to say that things haven't improved. "The percentage of our

turnover accounted for by data cleaning has risen 500 per cent in the

last two years," says Peter Kempsey, managing director of

Printronic.

"It now accounts for 20 per cent of the total." According to Jerry

Scott, MD of list brokering company HLB, data cleaning has moved further

up the client's agenda because firms are much more focused on how

customer service affects their attitude to data. "It has to be cleaner,"

she says, "and of a much higher standard. It's very irritating to

receive a wrongly addressed mailing when you know there's no excuse for

it."

With the Data Protection Act fully in force, however, the need for data

hygiene is putting a raft of new online services on the map. Not only do

they promise to fulfil the job for you, they are able to do it with

smaller databases and at a fraction of the price.

The arrival of these services, including Experian's Exact, is good news

in more than one respect. According to Allen, data cleaning problems

have been caused by overly technical processes being entrusted to

non-technical people. "I ask them to download their database file and

send it to us to be cleaned," he says. "They say: 'What?' We've dealt

with sizeable mailers who don't know how to take files off their

computer - they're worried about messing it up so they don't

bother."

Internet-based products

Just one of a number of companies to have released internet-based data

hygiene products is MarketingFile.com. "It provides an instant service

without subscription charges," says Kathleen Fisher, marketing executive

of MarketingFile.com. "We clean against the TPS, Fax Preference Service,

MPS list and PAF. There are no minimum order quantities so users do not

have to pay for huge cleaning jobs they may not need."

Online data cleaning clearly has its benefits. It is particularly useful

for smaller companies who want to clean their data as they use it and

who otherwise cannot afford the subscriptions the various suppression

file providers charge. "At a cost of over £10,000 a year for the

TPS and FPS lists alone, this is not a viable option for many

companies," says Fisher.

She believes companies not only save time and money using such products

but that there is an educational role. "Processing the transaction

themselves also gives a better understanding as to why they need to

clean their data," she observes.

So is this the way forward for all mailers? Some think not. "I struggle

to see how online services can really offer anything to people with

large databases - they need to have software constantly running on a

mainframe computer," says Ian Thurman, vice president of database

marketing software at CACI. "You also have to realise that data

cleansing is not an exact science. It doesn't always throw up exact

matches. You have to decide what you want to do if it's the same address

and a different Christian name, for example, and make a call depending

on what sort of mailing it is."

Printronic's Kempsey has similar reservations: "I don't believe the

internet is a good way to clean data. It's not operationally

interactive. It perhaps works well for small companies with smaller

volumes of data they want to use straightaway. But in terms of

incorporating it into large databases, I don't think you can do

that."

Printronic, for example, recently completed a project for a high street

chemist which brought together a number of different databases and

files.

"We managed to take three million people off their list," says

Kempsey.

"Mainly these were duplications but not all were straight matches. You

get problems arising from misspellings or data taken from telemarketing

that maybe isn't accurate."

Big companies with million plus databases clearly have different

requirements, but certainly not everyone is seeing the light when it

comes to bulk mailings that need attention. "We still encounter bulk

mailers who don't care how much of their mailing list is wrong because

they just want to hit a mailing target," says Mark Roy, MD of The REaD

Group.

No one solution

According to Richard Roche, director of data development at Royal Mail,

there is no ultimate solution because the market still suffers from the

problem of fragmentation. "There is no one suppression or hygiene file

that contains all the information you need," he says. "You have to blend

a number of different products and overlay that with your own

subjectivity and experience." Those who don't invest in either online

data cleaning or files such as the Goneaway Suppression File, have a

poor marketing ethos rather than an ignorance in terms of the choice,

believes Kempsey. "These companies believe it doesn't matter if the

addressee has moved house because, hopefully, the subsequent occupier

will respond."

What will certainly raise the stakes is the full force of the Data

Protection Act. "Before you even get into sensitive data and regulations

regarding data pooling, you need to be sure your database is

well-structured, well-ordered and accurate," says Allen. "If you don't

have all the street names, postcodes and house numbers in the right

database fields, for example, running it against the Telephone

Preference System is useless. It won't pick up the people who have

registered their objections to telemarketing."

Other industry developments could see the online side prosper. A

recession could, ironically, promote it as a viable option. "Cutbacks

will force all activity to be small and accurate to avoid wastage," says

Fisher.

Also, as marketers now only have 28 days to rectify a complaint against

bad data some forms of data will need to be checked more regularly at

their own additional cost.

Money savings is something which she and CACI's Thurman are both in

agreement.

"Budgetary pressures will encourage people to look more closely at their

return on investment," he says. "Spending money upfront on cleaning your

data not only reduces the size of your mailing and therefore its cost,

but it produces a better response as you are not alienating customers by

repeatedly bombarding them with the same message."

Meanwhile, technophobes are being helped. "Software has got more

user-friendly, it's no longer just the province of the techies,"

believes Thurman.

"Different types of address management software help marketers dedupe,

clean and merge/purge their data, as well as matching them to Mailsort

discounts. It's getting easier."

Legal responsibility

The cynics are still out there. Roy says: "People have had a legal

responsibility to keep accurate databases since the first Act in 1982,

so firms either take data accuracy seriously or they don't." But

progress is, it seems, being made.

The cleaned list is not only more cost-effective to mail as there's less

wastage but it will also improve the return on investment generated by

the company's whole direct marketing programme. Sophisticated targeting

and analysis only work if its building blocks - the basic data - is

accurate. "It's the old put rubbish in, get rubbish out maxim," says

Roche.

Data hygiene, it appears, is an art form that the industry is learning

to take seriously.