subject: Verify Email Addresses To Keep Your Database Current [print this page] Keeping your company's mailing data source up to date can be quite a huge job that requires a little bit of creativity in addition to a lot of work to get things going. Luckily technology and software developments are making the job easier. If you are planning to begin or improve your database, the following are some great recommendations:
What to Do with the Data
As time passes, you have probably generated a ton of data about your customers. The next issue is what you should be doing with it. You could use your directory of customer information to be able to address envelopes for your next mailer. You could also use it to add an individualized greeting to your email campaign recipients.
Obviously, you do not need to send every email, letter, or catalog to everyone in your database. You can also take this data in order to segment your target audience. You could use the information in order to separate men from women for a gender specific item advertisement. You could possibly send a customer a notice as to when their next service is due for services such as dental check-ups, oil changes or a reminder to order their prescription refills.
You also might be able to purchase mailing lists based on the needs of your business. In some instances, you might want to purchase a list of people that live nearby your business. In other cases, you might want to advertise only to people within a certain income bracket or by gender. Any conversions you get from marketing to a prospective market ought to be moved to your client list.
Keeping Databases Current
As time passes, you will need to ensure that your customer database stays clutter free. This can demand a fair amount of time which could even be sped up by using specialized tools. To avoid having your mail returned to you as a result of an incorrect address, putting into action address correction software to standardize the addresses in your system can help.
You can also send out verification emails to verify email addresses when people sign up to ensure it is a valid email. Name matching software can also be useful to avoid sending duplicates to someone in your database. If mailers that you send out are returned to you, be sure to remove them from your database to prevent incurring any extra costs on these dead leads.
