However, recent pronouncements about the future of the edited Electoral Roll have caused some feverish spade work.
The desire to defend the edited Electoral Roll in its current guise reminds me of St Augustine's most famous prayer - "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet".
There isn't a single direct marketer that I have met who doesn't claim to want to reduce their environmental footprint. Some believe that this is solely about recycling, but they have forgotten the mantra "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".
There's no doubt that the environmental lobby hold the trump card in the current regulatory and legislative world and it would be a foolish marketer who didn't recognise the importance of the sequence that those words follow.
The first word is "reduce" and in direct mail that translates to send out less folded paper.
To achieve the same business targets, this means better response which, as readers of Marketing Direct know, means better targeting facilitated by data, preference and channel management and data hygiene. I fail to see where the use of the edited Electoral Roll as a source of marketing data fits in this objective.
The Electoral Roll as source data is essentially about coverage at the expense of detail. But does the industry have the stomach to decouple the defence of the edited Electoral Roll as a hygiene tool from the use of it as a source of names and addresses?
If it doesn't, then it speaks volumes about the level of real commitment to a 21st-century vision of good direct marketing. This will be seized upon by the posse of vocal and well-connected detractors.
Then, we could consider the use of the Electoral Roll as a data hygiene product. With an opt-out rate of something near 40 per cent and, by my maths, rising at about 20 per cent every four years, then well before the Olympics swamp east London, the edited Electoral Roll will provide a data hygiene facility for less than half the population.
Wouldn't all the current effort being expended in digging holes be better utilised developing a real and sustainable industry hygiene product, rather than picking unwinnable fights?
- Charles Ping is client services director at Ai Data Intelligence
- See feature, page 25.