Data is marketer's best friend

Undoubtedly, data is an email marketer’s best friend. It gives you the highest returns on the lowest investment. But bad experiences with email marketing can make you wary of it. However, let not failures bow you down. Take total advantage of the benefits of email marketing. As the year 2014 approaches, have a relook at your email marketing strategy to do the same.

Understand what works for you. Do not imitate the strategy of another company. What worked for that company may not work for you. You need to know your audience well and strategize accordingly.

Evaluate your successes and failures of last year. Examine every aspect, from the “from” line to subject lines. Were all the elements in your email like the images, copy, calls to action, offers, etc. effective and did they bring you the desired results? If not, what went wrong? How can you rectify your weak areas?

Keep in touch with the industry trends and make sure that you have access to all vital information and statistics like what types of devices your subscribers use to open your emails, which links got the maximum clicks, which emails had highest conversion, time of day with best open rates, etc.

Before you revamp your email marketing strategy for the coming year, here is a quick look at some tips and statistics regarding data:

• Get accurate and detailed data from people who want to hear from you, then automate the numerous steps involved in sending them relevant messages. (eMarketer)
• One of the top benefits of e-mail marketing is that it yields reams of data about who a company’s best customers are. Marketers can target those people in the social realm and offer incentives or discounts to encourage them to share with their friends and advocate on behalf of the brand. (eMarketer)
• There’s a Big Data disconnect. In a recent study from Econsultancy, 77% of marketers said purchase history had a very high impact on return on investment (ROI), meaning they are leveraging that data for lead nurture and to aid the buyer’s decision-making process. (Joel Book)
• 7 in 10 people say they made use of a coupon or discount from a marketing email in the prior week. (2012 Blue Kangaroo Study)

Prepackaged Marketing Data is a leading organization specializing in database marketing. We aid organizations in customer acquisition and retention through accurate, updated and quality lead generating databases. Contact us to know more about our services.

Take the Clean Data path to Success

Your email deliverability success depends on your database cleanliness.  It is vital that you have the correct email addresses of the recipients you are trying to reach. If your database is ‘dirty’, it will inevitably mean failure. It is indispensable that you regularly clean and maintain your list to remove invalid addresses and improve your deliverability rates.

Elements of a dirty email list include:

• Incorrectly formatted email addresses
• Addresses that have previously “hard bounced”
• Addresses that have previously unsubscribed but are still active in the list
• Addresses from expired, invalid domains

You may be surprised to know that 75% of commercial businesses believe that they are losing as much as 73% of revenue due to poor data quality (Experian QAS) and Poor data quality costs US businesses more than $600 billion annually (Data Warehousing Institute).

List management is an ongoing procedure as people do not stay put. They move jobs, change their phone numbers and create new email addresses.  It is highly recommended that you keep your database updated with the latest information. These are few tips that will help you do just that:

Maintain consistent format. You should have consistent terms and formats across a given field. E.g. the date field: Ensure you maintain DD-MM-YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY throughout the database.

Do proper segmentation. Break down strings of data into multiple fields so you can more effectively standardize data elements with greater accuracy.

Verify content. Fields may appear populated but are not accurate (for example, a phone number may contain letters). Your data-cleansing process should identify and correct these anomalies so your data is fit for use.

Eliminate duplicates. Identify matches and eliminate duplicate records. These records cause unnecessary strain on your resources.

Do away with hard bounces. In the case of emails, even a few hard bounces will get your IP address blacklisted. Take extra precaution in this regard.

Email deliverability success relies completely upon clean lists. Prepackaged Marketing Data makes sure the lists are fresh, updated and always accurate. Contact us today.

Optimize success with accurate SAP Lists

There has been a call for better overall support from SAP for its products. UK & Ireland SAP User Group's annual survey found that users of SAP Business Suite and SAP Business Objects have expressed dissatisfaction with the service provided by the enterprise software company.

There has been a rapid growth in the number of companies opting to use SAP Business Objects as their analytics platform. It has increased from 7% in 2011 to 30% in 2013. Many want to integrate their core Business Suite software implementation with business Objects, however, lack of support from SAP is an issue. Many users have voiced out their frustration with the overall support provided by SAP for its products.

SAP has responded to this criticism by planning to implement a number of changes. "SAP takes feedback from our customers very seriously," said Pam Ireland, vice president, Analytics Customer Success, SAP.

In the meantime, we will keep our fingers crossed, hoping that all improvements and enhancements are implemented as early as possible.

Do you want to maximize your marketing efforts with high-quality SAP List? Prepackaged Marketing Data provides you the opportunity of getting in touch with hundreds of companies using SAP. We assure you:

• Safe & secure list for higher response rates
• 100% CAN-SPAM compliant data for permission-based marketing
• Up-to-date List to bring in maximum ROI
• List devoid of any duplicate or inaccurate information

Contact us for a free consultation. 

Add Quality to your Data

We cannot speak enough about the importance of quality data. We know that it is the foundation of your marketing effort. So here are some tips that will help you improve your data quality.

Audit is a must

Have a process in place to track your mail deliverability. It is vital to know which emails bounced back and update your database accordingly. This will help improve the effectiveness of your communication and overall planning in the long term.

Verify information at the start

Procure all required information when the contact is engaged. This is the right time to get information and make corrections if necessary.  This can be done through a web form, a telephone call, or even a live web chat. Incomplete information will hinder the work of your sales team. Ensure that you get all elements in the contact form filled.

Know your data inside out

Understand your data. Be on top of it. You should be able to identify data entry trends. Find out the sources of your bad data and eliminate it with right data verification and standardization processes. Tracking your mail deliverability will help you understanding your data quality challenges.

Get all involved

Get all departments involved in the data management process. As data quality leads to huge business benefits, this effort should be shared by all employees who capture, access, manipulate, and update CRM records. Look for tools that empower your staff to enhance data quality.

Refresh database

Data expires very quickly, especially in this fast-paced digital world. Regular database check-ups is therefore a must.

We at Prepackaged Marketing Data work towards providing you with the best data to make your marketing efforts bear fruits. Contact us for a free consultation. 

Respect your prospect's privacy

Email marketing loses its steam if it is not based on social data. After all, how can you aspire to achieve personalization of the highest possible kind unless you base it on your prospect’s interests, background and friend networks? The more data you have on him, the more you know him and what better way to know your prospect than through his social data.

Depending on your business goals you can segment your audience based on their behavioral data or profile information. And this audience segmentation would help you send highly targeted emails. However, to go ahead and do this segmentation it is vital that you are clear about your goals.

Businesses need to align their social data requests to their goals. For instance, a list-provider company that wants to launch a new list of dog breeders in Arkansas, has to do its data accumulation based on this requirement. The company should be very clear about their business goals from this launch and who would be its target.

It’s important that you do not get intrusive when you gather the data you require. Do not do the mistake of getting too personal. You should treat data collection as a mutual exchange. It is about respecting your prospects. Respect is key to successful data collection. As users share their information with you, your duty is to safeguard it and use it to provide value for them.

We at Prepackaged Marketing Data can help you find what you need. We have been doing it for years now.

Opt for opt-in lists

 We have been talking about personalization, dynamic content and other ways of refreshing email marketing.  A topic we can’t ignore in this regard is List Growth. It’s such an important aspect of an email-marketing program, but sadly, most often than not it gets neglected.

 There is no bigger way to harm your email marketing effort than to use a list that has been static for over a period of time, say one year. A list has to be constantly updated to bring the maximum out of your email campaigns.

 

You can employ many tactics to grow your list. In this regard, you should always opt for an opt-in subscriber list. The reality is that if someone has requested to receive communications from you, they are much more likely to interact with your email campaigns and ultimately convert. Requiring an opt-in before you send email marketing to a customer or prospect also creates a relationship of trust, one that you can reinforce over time with each communication. An opt-in list can ensure you higher retention rate, more engaged audience, and a reinforced reputation.

There are a few things you ought to keep in mind when you work towards getting yourself an opt-in subscriber list:

·         Always place the email opt-in option in an easy to find place on your website.
·         Make it easy for the visitor to your website to join or subscribe. Do not make them fill up multiple fields in the form.
·         Use appropriate and warm calls to action that make the visitors want to click on them.
·         Always remember to acknowledge your subscribers who opted in by sending a thank you message.

Looking for data solutions? Prepackaged Marketing Data might have just the right one for you. Talk to us to know more. 

5 Ways to Improve Data Quality

I have been writing about the benefits of effective email marketing. And it is common knowledge that your email marketing effort will not bring in the desired results unless you have good database. So before you begin building your email campaign, make sure you get your hands on the relevant database. Quality of the data can be ensured by following these tips:

  

1) Keep track of your mails

You should have a process in place to track the status of the mails you have sent. Emails that bounced back or were returned should be marked and the database updated accordingly. A proactive database is a necessity for improved communication effectiveness.

2) Double-check information before database entry

It is always easier and better to verify the information properly before making it a part of your database. Cross-checking later can be difficult. Correcting contact information is always easier when the client is engaged.

3) Know your data well

Understanding your data quality challenges and making required system changes over time are vital.

4) Get experts to manage data

Appoint multiple data quality managers who know the in and out of data quality management.

5) Have regular database checkups

Data expires pretty quickly. A regular database check-up to ensure that old data is refreshed is indispensable. To ensure contact data integrity, supplement real-time address verification efforts with regular bulk processing.

We, at Prepackaged Marketing Data, work towards providing you with the best data to make your marketing efforts bear fruits. Contact us for a free consultation. 

Grow a healthy database!

Growing your database is the most basic requirement of a successful marketing campaign. A large list is often necessary for maximizing your ROI. However, large list full of ‘dead’ or irrelevant contacts will not lead to a great result. A balance between quality and quantity is especially important.

So how does one get hold of the right database? There are countless examples of marketers who have ‘taken the easy way out’ by purchasing a database. However, what these people quickly learn is that purchasing a database is not the easy option. The sender can receive countless bounces and complaints. A list bought in a hurry can result in the sender being blacklisted or even prosecuted if the contacts on the list were not legitimately obtained.

Growing your database with the right contacts will not only provide a better result, it will also ensure you remain SPAM compliant. So how do you build and maintain the perfect database without wasting time and resources? It is easier than you think. The main strategy is to develop methods of capturing contacts into your existing processes and assets. Even a small change such as setting up a laptop with a registration form at an industry event can generate great results for your business.

If you are really short of time or resources you should always approach a reliable data provider with proven track record and testimonials. Always seek a sample of the required data before making the final call.

Data Quality & Corporate Success go hand in hand

Organizations, more than ever, rely on business intelligence systems to make key decisions. There is a huge emphasis on creating applications that can improve organizational productivity and efficiency and generate customer loyalty, for example, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (CRM), and Business Intelligence (BI). 

Companies invest huge amounts of money on these technologies to ensure streamlined business processes. However these systems can only reach its potential if they work on valid data.  Inaccurate data can make the whole system ineffective and impact the decision process as well.  

Decision makers who formulate business plans and strategies based on analysis derived from these enterprise applications are at risk unless a data quality program can ensure data validity at the most basic level. Decisions based on faulty data can cause direct financial loss, undermine customer loyalty, and damage an organization’s credibility. Data quality experts estimate that bad data can cost a business as much as 10 to 20 percent of its total system implementation budgets.

Any business improves efficiency and reduces risk exposure through quality data. After all, the information applications that run the business run on data themselves.

Do not make the mistake of underestimating data. 

The Indispensable Database

“In the 21st century, the database is the marketplace.” - Stan Rapp, MRM Partners Worldwide

Midst all the emerging shiny new technologies and digital platforms, the relevance of database has only increased. Creating, maintaining and using a database of customers’ is utmost important. Database holds much relevance because all your marketing efforts are based on it.

Who exactly are your customers? What age are they? Where do they come from? What are their characteristics & lifestyles? These are the questions your database should answer. 

All relevant details about your customers are crucial to understand exactly who your target market is. It also ensures that future marketing activities are more relevant. Measuring the effectiveness & ROI of your marketing efforts cannot be achieved unless you capture, store and utilize the information from your database. 

Your customer details must be in one place so they’re easily accessible for speed and accuracy with the ability to collate and measure that data. The database should be carefully maintained and regularly updated, to make full and effective use of a database thus created.

A good database will help you understand:

• Cost Per Lead
• Cost Per Sale
• Conversion Ratios – Enquiries to Sales
• Customer trends & habits
• Customer location
• Customer demographics
• Customer lifestyle

We will be happy to tell you about our database marketing services.

Get the best out of your email campaigns!

Email marketing remains an indispensable marketing channel for almost every company -- small or big. It has time and again proved to be a cost-effective marketing channel along with social media marketing.

Do not make the mistake of underestimating the importance of email marketing. Put your best foot
forward when it comes to email marketing. Your subscribers might forget when and how they subscribed for your newsletters or emails. Hence it is very important to keep a record of when and how each of your contact had given you permission.

For an effective email campaign it is crucial to have a ‘good list’. List building takes time but it is necessary. Compile it on your own or hire a list from an authentic list provider. Ensure that your data remains relevant. Also, provide a clear call to action at the end of your email, to help the reader take the right move.

Always include the ‘unsubscribe link’ and place it at a position in your email from where it is clearly visible. Keep the link active for 30 days from the sent date. Ensure it is active and the process is not misleading and confusing.

Provide your contact addresses and phone number in the sender’s address. Make your subscribers feel they are valuable for your business by providing exclusive offers and discounts. In your ‘welcome’ email always provide the timeline and the topic on which the subscribers are going to receive your emails. Always send personalized messages with the ‘recipients’ name.

Segment your list based on various parameters and personalize your email campaign accordingly. Remember one email cannot suit your entire list. Test test and test. Always run a test campaign before sending the final campaign. Testing gives you the idea on which email is going to work.

Finally, it is important that you are aware of the email marketing rules and regulation of your nation and the country you are going to do business with.

             Our data solutions can make your email campaigns deliver! 

Telemarketing works!

The advent of digitization has revolutionized our lives, which includes the methods we employ for marketing. However, certain means do not lose their value even with changing times. Telemarketing, a traditional way of reaching out to your audience, is still an effective tool for your business. It can be an easy and economical way to increase your profits and promote your product or service. The main benefit of using telemarketing is that it allows you to immediately connect with your customer and measure his/her level of interest in your product or service.

That’s not all.

 

Telemarketing has more benefits:

Expand sales territory: You can increase your sales territory by selling to customers in other sales territories, locally, nationwide or globally.

Less Cost: Telemarketing involves lower overhead costs than employing an outside sales force. You can also cut down on the costs of sales visits.

More interactive and personal service:  You can immediately respond to feedback from prospects while you're engaged in the sales process.

Build relationship with customers:  You can use the phone to stay in touch with existing customers, introduce new products to them and make additional sales. Staying in contact with your customers gives you an opportunity to find out more about the client’s needs and build a better relationship. In the end, improved customer satisfaction can have a significant impact on the profitability of your business.

Increases efficiency:  You can reach more prospects per hour, day and week by phone than you can with in-person sales calls.

Additionally, Telemarketing helps

• explain technical issues more clearly
• generate leads and appointments
• achieve results that are measurable

Better data = Better conversion rate

The returns on your marketing efforts depend on the success rate of your marketing messages. It is pertinent that it reaches the right people. Email marketing is an effective and viable method to reach maximum number of people. However, the effectiveness of your campaign depends on the quality of the data.

Along with effective content, Data Quality is also one of the most crucial requirements in achieving effective email marketing. Your interesting and engaging content for your email can be an utter waste if you end up sending it to a ‘bad’ list.

What components make a bad list?

• Duplicate email addresses
• Dead email addresses e.g. address of a person who is no longer the employee of a company
• Wrong email addresses
• Incorrect email formats
• Spacing errors

So, it is essential to remove bad elements in the data before sending email marketing campaigns. For this, the database has to be cleansed.  This cleansing can be achieved using two methods:

• Software
• Manual

Software is more effective as manual cleaning only eliminates spelling and spacing errors and duplicate emails. However, some data must be removed manually – such as returned and bounced emails.

Uncleansed data can only lead to futile marketing efforts, both in the form of the salespeople following invalid leads and unnecessary expenditure over irrelevant emails. The best practice is to cleanse the data before starting a new campaign. Make sure to remove any incorrect or unsuccessful email addresses from previous campaigns.

If you fail to clean your data it could result in you being blacklisted from both your email marketing provider and also from email providers, which is bad for your brand, reputation and also your marketing.

Having a clean database will improve efficiency and will likely improve your response rates, as a more focused and relevant database is used.  

Hit bull's eye with geo-targeted marketing

Customer data based on particular geographical areas is revolutionizing marketing. Using geo-targeted database, companies can drive more relevant and precise traffic from a specific location. This method is rapidly changing the landscape of digital marketing.

Wikipedia defines Geo-targeting in marketing as the method of determining the geolocation of a website visitor and delivering different content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zip code, organization, IP address, ISP or other criteria.

With Geo-targeting you can target your messages:

• To the entire market; e.g. Europe
• To countries within that market; e.g. England
• To one or more regions within the market; e.g. Yorkshire

Geo-targeting can help:

Small businesses that want to drive traffic to their offline shops or offices by targeting customers 

Service-oriented businesses, such as estate agents or law firms

Large businesses that want to drive customers to their websites or physical shop locations

Geo-Targeted database helps:

• Promote your products and services to highly targeted audiences
• Increase your response rate from email campaigns
• Tailor your marketing campaigns based on geographical locations
• Get better results from clean and updated prospect files 

Prepackaged Marketing Data can help your company make inroads into new markets and territories. We specialize in building location-based file data that can help you to send your marketing messages to highly targeted audience.

Our Geo-Targeted Marketing service helps you target relevant location-based customers. 

Data: Get it RIGHT!

Reaching the right people at the right time with the right offer through the right channels is the RIGHT way to better, stronger and more effective marketing.

Who are the right people?

Every person you communicate to will not respond. You have to find the people who are more likely to respond to your message.  You can use data to sieve out people with similar traits like income, age, gender, location, occupation, hobbies, purchases, etc. Then, based on the collected data, you can use that information to target people with similar characteristics. This will definitely improve response rate, increase efficiency and boost your marketing return on investment.

What is the right time?

You can determine the behavioral pattern of people by monitoring their interaction with your organization. With the help of this data, you can reach customers more effectively and efficiently. You can save time, effort and cost by reaching out to customers when they are more likely to respond.

What will be the right offer?

Based on what people purchase or do, and their preferences, you can offer them what they like or want. Offers can be customized for the individual. For instance, if you know an individual has bought adventure books recently, you can recommend other-adventure-related products to that person.

Which are the right channels?

Through data, you can come to know the preferred communication channel of an individual. It is vital to have this information as there are many communication channels available. Approaching each through the right channel would elicit positive response. For example, a person may prefer to get deals and offers through social media.

The possibilities with right data are endless! View our data solutions

Make your foundation strong!

Database is pivotal to your business and if used properly, can create effective communication that people respond to. Since data is the chief source of lead generation and ROI, you cannot make the mistake of taking it for granted.  However, data is getting increasingly abundant, making it even more difficult to get the data that matters.

Analysts estimate that the volume of business data worldwide, across all companies, doubles every 1.2 years.

Quality of the data has to be ensured and data cleansing helps in that. Maintaining a database is as important as building a database. Top marketers, today, say that focus on quality data is the key to their successes. They build their creative campaigns, precise segmentation, accurate lead scoring, and relevant personalization on the foundation of great data quality. 

Data should be the all in all when you make a marketing automation investment, or look to maximize the return you get from it. It’s the foundation upon which everything in marketing rests. And if you don’t have clean and consistent data, your efforts will be built on the shakiest of foundations. Today, segmentation, personalization, lead scoring, lead routing, or marketing analysis are not daunting tasks.  Improving the quality of your data can greatly improve your effectiveness as a marketer and can help you create more focused messaging.  Valid, correct and comprehensive lists of your choice will make your marketing campaigns effective.