Businesses know email is a reliably valuable marketing channel, but how do you quantify that value, and once you do, how do you increase it? Email append services enhance the quality of the information your prospect files contain, making all your marketing efforts come closer to their intended targets and increasing ROI on all your activities, including email.
To make the most of email append, it helps to know what to expect from the process and lay the groundwork for it.
How Big Is Your Sieve?
If you think of data hygiene as a process of sifting through information and throwing out anything that doesn’t fit, then the size of the holes in your virtual sieve determine what’s left. The more refinements you place on records, the greater the chance that you’ll miss out on data that’s still relevant. Conversely, a sieve with larger gaps can allow potentially inaccurate data through. That’s where email append experience comes in.
Working with data append services lets you fine-tune to reach the optimal range at which you keep as much of your valid data as possible while eliminating invalid records. That sweet spot is different for every business, so analytics are an invaluable aid to data hygiene.
On-Boarding New Information
Data append gives you a wealth of new data, but how you use it factors heavily into its ultimate value to you. If you use append processes to gather email addresses for your mailing list, you might gain email access to an additional 25 percent of the accounts on the list. You could add those addresses to batch mailings and get a modest response, but how much more would you get from them if you started with an appropriate introductory letter based on each lead’s needs and interests? By taking a gradual, progressive approach to using new information in your email marketing, you can more easily fold in new data with leads you’re already nurturing and streamline communications with every market segment.
Preference Pages
You want communication to be a two-way street, and preference centers are an excellent way to get your new email audience motivated to share. After your introductory email message, get leads settled in with a link to your preference center where they can choose the communication level and type that suits their needs. You might include check boxes for the following:
- Newsletter subscription
- Discount offers
- New product and service announcements
- New content announcements
- Webinar and seminar invitations
Keep a Data Hygiene Schedule
Data decays at a far quicker rate than many might think; around 3 percent per month attrition rate is standard in most industries. If you knew that as many as a third of your email addresses would be out of date by the end of the year, your email marketing program would be in trouble. Fortunately, you can take action to keep email addresses valid by following a regular hygiene schedule. Regular data cleansing rids lists of duplicate or invalid data.
Email append can be a major force multiplier for your marketing efforts, giving you more complete data about your leads and offering a new channel through which you can contact them. Still have questions? Talk to one of our data hygiene experts and discover what cleaner data does for you.
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