The Case
Hotel chain Ramada Jarvis has 53 properties situated across the UK. The company had prepared its annual Scottish Escapes 北京赛车pk10 in a bid to promote the country as a holiday destination.
But the campaign also had an underlying aim of retaining existing customers who had been responsive in the past 12 months, as well as regenerating those who had lapsed.
Sharon Kalsi, leisure marketing manager at the chain, says a key bugbear was the high level of returned mail and how this might affect the customer view of the brand.
"Our data quality was not good," she says. "It consisted of data from reservation systems and from hand-written registration cards, so the quality of capture wasn't high. One of the key problems was the duplication within the database."
The solution
Data bureau Alchemetrics set to work on the database. As well as applying its own data quality and audit applications to highlight oddities within the file, such as characters appearing in the wrong fields, it also applied a number of industry files.
Royal Mail's Postal Address File was run against the data to highlight postcode and address errors. The bureau also applied Ramada's opt-out list, as well as the Mailing Preference Service.
Alchemetrics used the National Change of Address file to suppress people who have moved and also to track down those who asked Royal Mail to redirect post to their new address. In addition, the Gone Away Suppression file was screened against the data to identify individuals who have moved home.
Deceaseds were also removed from the database. This was achieved using Mortascreen, which consists of probate data. Nicky Kerridge, account manager at Alchemetrics, says: "There can be a lapsed time from when people die to when their name appears on that file."
The Bereavement Register was therefore used in addition. The file carries information on deceaseds collected from funeral directors and local authority registrars. "There's a quicker turnaround of names and it captures those who haven't left an estate," explains Kerridge.
Suppressions were run in ascending order of royalty costs to ensure any duplicate suppressions were removed beforehand. Alchemetrics also provided reports on data quality from start to finish, underlining errors and specific areas for improvement to bear in mind for future campaigns.
The results
Before the exercise, Ramada Jarvis had a database of 50,000 records. The exercise delivered back 30,000 accurate, deduplicated names.
"As a result of the exercise we had a 40 per cent increase in our revenue stream, it reduced the cost of acquisition, and we had less than one per cent returns," says Kalsi.
CLEANING KIT: GAS FILE
Q: What is the GAS file?
The GAS (Gone Away Suppression) file is a database of home movers totalling more than 11 million records. It increases by almost 200,000 records each month. It is compiled from many data sets, including a national transactional file and returned mailings/address changes supplied by large-volume direct marketers. It is one of the most established and widely used UK suppression files.
Q: How does it work?
The data is pooled by the REaD Group and every mover is qualified by the existence of a new move-in. The resulting file is then used to suppress goneaways from mailing activity.
Q: What are the benefits and any downsides?
Suppressing goneaways is a must, especially for cold mailings. It reduces wastage and improves the responsiveness of campaigns. It is often wise for a company to use the file in conjunction with its own mailing returns to be completely sure not to remove 'live' accounts.
Alex Naisby is customer acquisition director at Identex.