What is data hygiene?
The term “data hygiene” refers to a set of procedures for keeping a database in good shape. When we talk about data hygiene on this Web site, we normally discuss it in connection with databases that contain names and addresses. However, the concept of data hygiene is important for any kind of data.
For name-and-address data, data-hygiene procedures normally entail:
- Ensuring that the database doesn’t contain duplicate records.
- Ensure all records in your file are up to date and accurate
- Maintaining the addresses in the Royal Mails standard format.
Depending upon the needs of the company or organization that maintains the database, data-hygiene procedures might also include:
- Querying the National Change of Address (NCOA) database to determine if any of the individuals or companies/organizations in the database have relocated, and updating the database with new addresses as needed.
- Making sure each address in the database is actually a valid address to which the Royal Mail will deliver mail.
Other terms for data hygiene are “data cleanup” and “data scrubbing.”
5 reasons why better data hygiene will make you shine
As business data is constantly changing, you can find that your database is out of date and underperforming for you, resulting in costly, inaccurate marketing mailings and gaps in your customer knowledge. Data Hygiene or data cleansing is an effective way to check and correct your business information, ensuring you always get the most from your database.
- It will reduce mailing costs
- It will increase response
- It will ensure legal compliance
- It will eliminate duplication
- It will improve accuracy
Our database hygiene or cleaning service
Data hygiene or data cleaning is critical to maintaining the value of your database, as databases decaying at over 30% a year, you’ll need to keep on top of your records. People move, companies move, records are inaccurate or incomplete and we make it our business to improve and enhance databases through our cleaning processes, because as data deteriorates, so do the results of using it. Customer lifetime values fall, customer revenue falls and response to marketing campaign falls.
We are ISO 27001 accredited, giving you piece of mind that all data processing, hygiene and manipulation will be completed in-house in a confidential manner. We provide a free data health check every time, to ensure that your data is accurate and up-to-date in order to minimise wastage and maximise response rates.
Your database could be costing you money and preventing you from maximizing your sales potential.
The money that you could save could be redirected into opportunities to generate more revenue and profit. Under current trading conditions and the resulting restrictions on marketing budgets, updating and cleaning your database is now more important than ever. What is more the mailings that you send your customer are the face of your business and if the address quality is poor, or people’s names are spelt incorrectly the image of your business as a professional organization is tarnished.
By using our quick data quality audit service you can find out how much more money you could have in your marketing budget to generate more sales if your database was updated and cleaned.
So call us today and ensure you maximise your business performance in future with clean up to date and accurate data.
Have you entered the Bluetopia 2011 competition?
[sct date="03/30/2012 18:00" align="none" size="2"]
