Data Quality: Get suppressed

To the classic, best-practice reasons for not mailing the deceased and goneaways - consideration for the bereaved, responsibility to your brand, risk of fraud from recipients of mistargeted mail, and good financial sense - we can now add environmental concerns.

Clean and accurate suppression is more important than ever, and the variety of online options has made the practice accessible and cost-effective for all.

A company looking to clean its data regularly has three options: it can retain a bureau, at some expense but in the knowledge that the job is being done; it can do the work in-house with the aid of software, saving money but requiring a degree of know-how; or it can tap into an online suppression system, which typically bundles a suite of dead and goneaway databases and invites companies to upload their data, usually with a preliminary audit included.

With the latter option, once the client decides to go ahead, a pay-as-you-go pricing structure enables it to ensure it spends no more than it can afford. The pricing model is indicative of the fact that for those likely to use such a service regularly, online suppression may not be the cheapest practice. But for smaller companies willing to pay, it represents a way in to suppression.

The numbers tell the story. "In the UK each year, more than three million people move house, and around 600,000 die," says Broadsystem chief executive Caroline Worboys. "There are also around 50,000 changes made to telephone numbers every day, and Telephone Preference Service registrations are averaging 120,000 a week. Data decays very quickly."

Broadsystem's Broadata service can run off 100,000 records in 15 minutes. It also offers free preliminary online reports on the quality of a client's data and an immediate quote for the improvements that can be made.

Suppression gets the thumbs-up from everyone involved in the data business - not just those in bureaus and online data services. Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voekel data planning director John Wallinger says it is in the interests of agencies and clients to ensure they are getting to the right people with as little wastage as possible, even if the former may have to convince the latter of the benefit.

Wallinger says that some clients "seem to be blind to the benefits of data cleansing" because revenue often outstrips the cost of mistargeted mailing. "To them, there is little economic benefit in (suppression), which is why we definitely need to put forward different arguments about wastage, cost and the customer annoyance factor."

Craik Jones offers Spectrum Data Management's online data processing and cleansing product, while The REaD Group's suppressiononline.com enables users to identify goneaways and deceased records via tools such as The Bereavement Register, and to spot duplicates and badly formed addresses by using the Royal Mail's Postal Address File.

"Some online solutions force businesses with limited budgets to buy more than they require when they simply want to suppress deceased and goneaways," says Mark Roy, chief executive and founder of The REaD Group. He argues that what smaller businesses - or firms with limited budgets - need is an online suppression solution that operates on a pay-per-record basis and doesn't require access via a bureau.

Roy adds that The REaD Group's product - suppressiononline.com - works in this way, but is not solely for cost-conscious small businesses running on tight budgets. "It is just as useful for large organisations that simply want to process their customer data against the established, market-leading products," he explains.

Some estimates put the half-life of customer data at two years. Colin Rickard, managing director EMEA of data integration firm DataFlux, says that from a database of 500,000 prospects, only 125,000 of the original data records will be serviceable and profitable two years on.

Others are more conservative in their calculations. Experian, for instance, reckons data quality decays at a rate of around 14 per cent a year. Its online service, Intact, offers a free "interactive audit" and, as well as some of the suppression techniques mentioned already, includes County Court Judgment records.

But although online suppression has many strengths, there are those who advise clients against expecting too much of the practice. While he notes the importance of suppression, particularly when it comes to cutting down on waste, The Software Bureau director David Murray suggests online tools are only part of the suppression jigsaw.

"Online has made suppression easier in some respects, but it can be a blunt instrument, with little in the way of quality control or bespoke programming," he says.

"A more sophisticated option is to take the suppression in-house, using an embedded module covering deceased, goneaways and those registered on the Mailing Preference Service (MPS), or to use a traditional bureau."

As ever, no option is right for everyone, and companies should elect to suppress by the most appropriate means available to them.

HOW CAN CONSUMERS 'OPT OUT' ONLINE?

Along with goneaways and the deceased, another key suppression group is that made up of individuals who have taken a stand against direct mail. The direct marketing industry might like them to know targeted mail can be useful and interesting, but the fact is that these people don't want to hear it.

This group is estimated to be the largest of all. The REaD Group cites a total UK direct mail volume of four billion items, of which around four per cent goes to goneaways, one per cent to the deceased and, according to a recent YouGov survey, around 70 per cent to people who simply throw it straight in the dustbin.

One such site is the REaD Group's itsmypost.com, launched in May last year. It claims that the average person in the UK gets 120 pieces of direct mail a year, and quotes another YouGov survey which found that the public would like the volume to be reduced by as much as 75 per cent.

Itsmypost.com is based around a simple concept: users inform the site of particular companies they no longer wish to hear from, and The REaD Group either mails the firms (at around £1 a time) or emails them (for an annual rate of £4.95). It also asks users to reveal the companies they are interested in, and registers them with the Mailing Preference Service, which like the other traditional suppression services offers web registration.

Itsmypost.com uses technology gained from the now defunct web service My Right To Be Private, which The REaD Group acquired last year.

Alternative services include myletterbox.co.uk. Founded by Nigel Readhead, managing director of list and data provider Dataworkseurope, it is free to consumers. Offering a blanket block on doordrops and direct mail, the site, like itsmypost.com, also allows users to identify products and services that are of interest, letting them nominate a medium by which they wish to be contacted.

Elsewhere, iammoving.com is a free complement to the Royal Mail's forwarding service. While the website is not designed to control the redirection of individuals' mail, it does promise to inform companies with which customers have a relationship of their new address.

THE VALUE OF SELF-SUPPRESSION

The fundamental piece of wisdom that underpins the logic of all data suppression tools is that no company has an interest in mailing those who are going to throw expensively produced and distributed communications straight in the bin without even reading them - to do so is simply a waste of time and money.

For companies mailing existing customers, the imperative is twofold, as unwanted mail can strain the relationship. As far as these firms are concerned, directness at an early stage may be the best policy.

In order to avoid misunderstandings later, it is important for companies to ask consumers at the point at which they reveal their personal details how they would like to receive marketing communications. Thereafter, companies should offer their customers regular and easy opt-outs from mailing lists.

For some customers, direct mail and telephone sales may be a bugbear, while email promotions may be acceptable or even desirable. Either way, there is no value in making it difficult for customers to define their relationship with you.

After all, suppression is very much like industry regulation, in that it is far more palatable when you are managing it on your own behalf.