Data cleansing - look after your data!

I have now been in the data industry for about 3 years and during this period I must say that I have only dealt with a small number of cleansing jobs and it is my mission to increase awareness about data quality and how important it is to look after your data as I feel more companies should be dealing with this issue!

More than 7 million people move home every year, over 60k people die every month and with suppression files such as TPS updating /changing constantly my question is can your business really afford to ignore the issue of data cleansing if it means that you will be losing valuable customers?

Cleansing your data will help in several ways; firstly it will save you money on wasted mailings to people who can't respond! Think how much it costs to send a mail piece out for example taking into account data costs, printing and fulfilment such as postage and envelopes. Secondly it will protect your brand and minimize bad PR by avoiding inappropriate communication.

With regards to TPS it could also save you more expense as if people were to complain to the information commissioner you may be landed with a fine and again more bad PR.

When we cleanse data we can also add value to your data by adding more fields that are applicable to your business and will help you target your ideal market more accurately. For example we can profile your data in order to tell you what kind of people currently buy from you or perhaps we could append some new fields such as a persons income and other demographics thus cutting your costs on targeting the wrong people.

There are many other benefits to this such as being more "green" and cutting down on waste so please think more about this important issue!

Tags:  Data Cleansing

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