Newsletter - May 2009

Customer retention and acquisition? Start with your own data.
By Matthew Walton, Technical Project Manager

At a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty, effective targeted marketing is an essential means of maintaining a stable customer base. Not only is it necessary to maximise customer retention through the maintenance of strong relationships, it is also imperative to regularly acquire new business. Ever-contracting marketing budgets and overly-cautious consumers however mean it is not so easy to achieve such objectives.

An often unused but invaluable customer retention strategy focuses on the maintenance of high data quality. A significant proportion of a business’s customer base is periodically reduced via the effects of natural attrition e.g. mortality and relocation. The associated volumes of such affected records are often grossly underestimated, and in many cases their identity remains unknown to businesses. Additionally, data integrity is perpetually degraded via miscommunication and data mis-management.

Continuing to hold customer information that is out-dated or of poor quality increases the risk that businesses:

• upset or alienate its customers, most commonly caused by ignoring preference information or by mailing deceased individuals;
• disconnect themselves from customers, therefore reducing the size of the customer base and hence future selling potential; and
• incur unnecessary expenditure by executing targeted marketing campaigns that include disconnected customers.

How can businesses mitigate data quality degradation? The answer can be found through the use of comprehensive consumer data audits such as those conducted by Matrix-Data Solutions. Using a collection of industry recognised reference files and a selection of leading edge data analysis techniques, data can be screened for the purpose of:

• identifying customers that are non-contactable due to mortality, relocation or preference reasons;
• re-engaging customers for whom businesses no longer have the correct contact details; and
• profiling customers in order to improve marketing strategy and maximise cross selling potential.

A Matrix-Data Solutions data audit is conducted for free to enable businesses to determine the extent of data cleansing that is required. Positive audit results provide peace of mind for businesses before conducting targeted marketing campaigns whereas negative results highlight elements of data that can be improved in order to save money.

To see an example consumer data audit report please visit the Matrix-Data Solutions website.
To discuss your requirements in more detail please contact us on 020 7074 1200 or info@matrix-data.co.uk.