Steps to maintain Data prior to Email Appending

Author: Arun Pillai

Maintaining data prior to email appending holds the key for an effective data appending campaign. By following these simple but effective steps, businesses can maximize their database leverage when opting for a data or email appending program.

Step 1: Profile your data extensively

Having data and having quality data can be the difference between an ordinary marketing campaign and a successful campaign. Quality data essentially means having a holistic data with detailed profiling. As a data appending best practice, businesses ensure their data profiling in detailed offering extensive insight about clients, potential clients, b2b vendors and future collaborators etc.

Many companies limit their data profiling to just the name, address, phone numbers, and email. The smarter companies understand how detailed profiling is an asset. Have a data profiling for each of your customers, competitors and target markets. Include as many profiling details including financial data, executive bios, social media profiles, SWOT analysis, markets served etc especially for effective b2b appending.

Step 2: Clean out any bad data or duplicate entries

Email database has a short shelf life as industry estimates suggest over 22% of email lists decay over a period of time with people changing email addresses. A Dun and Bradstreet report reveals that over 500,000 businesses change their locations annually. All of these can mean bad entries if the database is not updated with time. Likewise, duplicate entries must be removed as they can act as a downer when tracing analytics and trends from the database. Also, email appending companies charge businesses for every appended entry. Having duplicate entries can escalate the cost of data appending service substantially without any benefits. Hence step two requires the removal of all such bad entries and duplicate entries from the existing database.

Step 3: Enhance data with insight valuable information

Email appending has evolved far more than just an email marketing tool. Today email appending is used by enterprises to understand trends and forecasts. This is then used by marketing teams to devise strategic campaigns around what consumers like to hear, feel and see. Ensure fields like marital status, household income, monthly budget on essentials, etc are all catered for in database fields. A deeper insight into customer profiles can be virtual gold dust and data appending offers the perfect opportunity to maximize such insights.

Step 4: Seek collaboration with professional email appending companies

For a well-oriented data appending program, email appending companies match the company database with their master file. Ensure the vendor has the optimum quality of the master file and maintains both manual and automated checks to avoid entry duplications or errors.  When collaborating with email appending companies, opt for those companies that offer opt-in services for clients as per the CAN-SPAM Act. This will ensure you do not have to worry about any spam laws and all email appending is lawful leaving you to focus on marketing takeaways.

Conclusion: For all the benefits offered by email appending, the onus is on business enterprises to maintain data prior to appending. The steps list out the best way to maintain data for an effective database and successful data appending program.