The case
Although it is a national charity, most of Heart Research UK's support has traditionally come from the north of England, so in 2005 it relaunched with the aim of expanding its donor base nationally. The charity also wanted to be more proactive in terms of communicating with supporters, but had concerns over the quality of its data and usability of its database.
The database then held 36,000 records and had been predominantly designed for auditing purposes, so did not lend itself easily to marketing. Data also tended to be housed in silos, making it impossible to identify a single customer view. Much of it was incomplete, and the charity was concerned about the number of duplicates and the quality of the data it had bought in.
The solution
Heart Research UK asked data-engineering consultancy Rocket Science to clean its data, prepare the database for marketing and auditing purposes, and provide a single customer view. This would enable it to drive a structured marketing programme to its database, maximising opportunities to communicate with supporters, cross-sell alternative donation activities and minimise churn.
Eventually the charity also wanted to be able to carry out these processes itself.
To enable the charity to be able to identify duplicates, Rocket Science created a match screen within the database which also makes it possible to create a single customer view. The Postal Address File was then used to check which addresses were valid, removing several thousand records.
Goneaways were also removed using Experian's Intact product, and a system was set up to enable the charity to flag and suppress future goneaways.
In addition, Experian's Intact bereavement suppression service was used to screen out any deceased records. This process had to be looked at carefully from two perspectives. While the charity doesn't want to send communications to deceased supporters, it was important to identify households where there is a partner who still supports it. Households with both deceased and living donors were then flagged for special treatment.
One of the main sources of incomplete data was on sponsor forms. But just by Rocket Science making them easier to fill in, the charity has been able to collect a significant amount of clean data and raise 拢16,100 in additional Gift Aid over the past year.
The results
"Our remit was to build a system that could easily be managed in-house," says Rocket Science director Vaughan Lonsdale. "We took away some of the mystique of data by building a user-friendly database that enabled interrogation on several levels, and applied the thinking behind profiling techniques to target supporters of this type of charity."
The database now numbers some 45,000 individual supporters, and whereas Heart Research UK typically took a year to reach 拢1m in revenue, last year it hit this mark by August and saw an increase in donations of 14 per cent overall.
Barbara Harpham, national director at Heart Research UK, says: "Getting the database right was fundamental to our objectives to significantly grow our supporter base over the next few years. We are now confident we're mailing valid names, and the greater understanding of our supporters means we can be more tailored and effective in our communications."
CLEANING KIT: POSTCODE ADDRESS FILE
Q: What is the Postcode Address File?
The Postcode Address File (PAF) is compiled, updated and supplied by Royal Mail. It is the mail standard for the UK and currently contains 27 million delivery points and 1.7 million postcodes.
Q: How does it work?
The first half of the postcode is called the Outward and the second part the Inward. The Outward defines a local area whereas the Inward defines a more specific location within that area. Only large users will have a unique code, therefore in most cases a postcode will define a group of premises.
Q: What are the benefits and any downsides?
Postcodes contribute to more accurate matching of addresses for suppression or deduplication. They are used extensively for profiling areas of the population and also for a host of online services, as the humble postcode can pinpoint your location. However, the raw PAF file requires standardisation before it can be used accurately - there are also up to 106,000 changes each month to be keep abreast of.
Chris Cuffe, managing director, helpIT systems.