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  &lt;p&gt;
    &lt;strong&gt;Just over half&lt;/strong&gt; of emarketers in the UK (57%)&#160;said they&#160;cleansed their databases regularly.&#160; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But the other 43% may be causing themselves some problems:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Pushing relevant messages to people based on incorrect criteria can &lt;strong&gt;damage&#160;your brand and reduce campaign effectiveness&lt;/strong&gt;.&#160;Targeting contacts with&#160;relevant messages from an accurate database is fundamental. Without clean,&#160;complete and accurate data, messages can never be relevant and targeted&#160;despite your best intentions.&lt;br /&gt;&#160;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Trying to send to bounced records repeatedly will lead to &lt;strong&gt;deliverability issues&lt;/strong&gt;&#160;with many of the major webmail ISPs.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Emailing contacts who have unsubscribed is both &lt;strong&gt;against EU regulations and&#160;will lead to complaints&lt;/strong&gt;.&#160;Complaints to ISPs using the mark as spam button or&#160;to blacklisting organisations will affect your deliverability.&#160; &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;The findings support this.&#160;Deliverability is a major problem with more than half of respondees having trouble getting into recipients&#8217; inboxes.&#160; &lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;Campaign performance is compromised as over two thirds of companies believe that they are not using email as effectively as they could. &lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;The key reasons behind this are cited as lack of budget and poor quality of data. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Data cleaning can be a fairly straightforward exercise to implement.&#160;Your email partner should be able to automate a number of these activities for you:&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Suppress all hard bounces and unsubscribes.&#160;This should happen as&#160;&#160; standard in your email sending tool. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;At the point of data capture use validation to ensure data is entered accurately&#160;and if you use a double opt-in strategy you can ensure that both the email&#160;addresses are valid and clearly present to the subscriber what information they&#160;have entered.&#160;On our website is more information on &lt;a href="http://www.adestra.co.uk/data_collection"&gt;data collection&lt;/a&gt;&#160;and also how &lt;a href="http://www.adestra.co.uk/deliverability_data_collection"&gt;data collection techniques impacts your deliverability&lt;/a&gt;.&#160;Optimising&#160;this part of your email marketing programme can have significant benefits.&#160; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Refresh your data sets by using 'update my details' and cleaning campaigns.&#160;There is a &lt;a href="http://www.adestra.co.uk/case_study_online_forms_in_email_marketing"&gt;case study&lt;/a&gt; on our web site for Informa showing this in action as part&#160;of a readership survey. The campaign achieved a 6.5% completion rate, and is&#160;typical of a creative use of our &lt;a href="http://www.adestra.co.uk/data"&gt;data&lt;/a&gt; services.&#160;&#160;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;Accept that data collected over 3 years ago may not be worth using any more.&#160; &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;Investments in data cleaning can be self financing through the improved campaign effectiveness. There is also a potential cost saving as more accurate data allows more targeted campaigns which will reduce your sending volumes.&#160; &lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;Data cleaning is often overlooked, but should not be ignored.&#160;Good data is essential to email marketing and should be a priority for all email marketers.&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;
    &lt;strong&gt;
      &lt;em&gt;Henry Hyder-Smith is the Managing Director of Adestra.&lt;/em&gt;
    &lt;/strong&gt;
  &lt;/p&gt;
</body-formatted>
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  &lt;Paragraph&gt;
    &lt;Emphasis&gt;Just over half&lt;/Emphasis&gt; of emarketers in the UK (57%)&#160;said they&#160;cleansed their databases regularly.&#160; &lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;But the other 43% may be causing themselves some problems:&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;List Type="Disc"&gt;
    &lt;ListItem&gt;Pushing relevant messages to people based on incorrect criteria can &lt;Emphasis&gt;damage&#160;your brand and reduce campaign effectiveness&lt;/Emphasis&gt;.&#160;Targeting contacts with&#160;relevant messages from an accurate database is fundamental. Without clean,&#160;complete and accurate data, messages can never be relevant and targeted&#160;despite your best intentions.&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&#160;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;/ListItem&gt;
    &lt;ListItem&gt;Trying to send to bounced records repeatedly will lead to &lt;Emphasis&gt;deliverability issues&lt;/Emphasis&gt;&#160;with many of the major webmail ISPs.&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;/ListItem&gt;
    &lt;ListItem&gt;Emailing contacts who have unsubscribed is both &lt;Emphasis&gt;against EU regulations and&#160;will lead to complaints&lt;/Emphasis&gt;.&#160;Complaints to ISPs using the mark as spam button or&#160;to blacklisting organisations will affect your deliverability.&#160; &lt;/ListItem&gt;
  &lt;/List&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;The findings support this.&#160;Deliverability is a major problem with more than half of respondees having trouble getting into recipients&#8217; inboxes.&#160; &lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;Campaign performance is compromised as over two thirds of companies believe that they are not using email as effectively as they could. &lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;The key reasons behind this are cited as lack of budget and poor quality of data. &lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;Data cleaning can be a fairly straightforward exercise to implement.&#160;Your email partner should be able to automate a number of these activities for you:&lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;List Type="Disc"&gt;
    &lt;ListItem&gt;Suppress all hard bounces and unsubscribes.&#160;This should happen as&#160;&#160; standard in your email sending tool. &lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;/ListItem&gt;
    &lt;ListItem&gt;At the point of data capture use validation to ensure data is entered accurately&#160;and if you use a double opt-in strategy you can ensure that both the email&#160;addresses are valid and clearly present to the subscriber what information they&#160;have entered.&#160;On our website is more information on &lt;Link URL="http://www.adestra.co.uk/data_collection" Window="Self"&gt;data collection&lt;/Link&gt;&#160;and also how &lt;Link URL="http://www.adestra.co.uk/deliverability_data_collection" Window="Self"&gt;data collection techniques impacts your deliverability&lt;/Link&gt;.&#160;Optimising&#160;this part of your email marketing programme can have significant benefits.&#160; &lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;/ListItem&gt;
    &lt;ListItem&gt;Refresh your data sets by using 'update my details' and cleaning campaigns.&#160;There is a &lt;Link URL="http://www.adestra.co.uk/case_study_online_forms_in_email_marketing" Window="Self"&gt;case study&lt;/Link&gt; on our web site for Informa showing this in action as part&#160;of a readership survey. The campaign achieved a 6.5% completion rate, and is&#160;typical of a creative use of our &lt;Link URL="http://www.adestra.co.uk/data" Window="Self"&gt;data&lt;/Link&gt; services.&#160;&#160;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;LineBreak /&gt;&lt;/ListItem&gt;
    &lt;ListItem&gt;Accept that data collected over 3 years ago may not be worth using any more.&#160; &lt;/ListItem&gt;
  &lt;/List&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;Investments in data cleaning can be self financing through the improved campaign effectiveness. There is also a potential cost saving as more accurate data allows more targeted campaigns which will reduce your sending volumes.&#160; &lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;Data cleaning is often overlooked, but should not be ignored.&#160;Good data is essential to email marketing and should be a priority for all email marketers.&lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;
    &lt;Emphasis&gt;
      &lt;Quote&gt;Henry Hyder-Smith is the Managing Director of Adestra.&lt;/Quote&gt;
    &lt;/Emphasis&gt;
  &lt;/Paragraph&gt;
&lt;/FormattedContent&gt;</body-unformatted>
  <created-at type="datetime">2008-04-18T17:08:00+01:00</created-at>
  <enabled-blog-comments-count type="integer">1</enabled-blog-comments-count>
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  &lt;p&gt;
    &lt;strong&gt;The &lt;a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-marketing-industry-census-2008"&gt;E-Consultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2008&lt;/a&gt;, published March 2008, investigated over 600 email marketers&#8217; approach to data.&lt;/strong&gt;&#160; &lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;After all, accurate data powers relevant targeting, which is proven to deliver the best results.&#160; &lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;The findings showed that regular data cleaning has taken a back seat for many email marketers.&lt;/p&gt;
</extract-formatted>
  <extract-unformatted>&lt;FormattedContent xmlns="http://www.e-consultancy.com/schema/formattedContent/"&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;
    &lt;Emphasis&gt;The &lt;Link URL="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-marketing-industry-census-2008" Window="Self"&gt;E-Consultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2008&lt;/Link&gt;, published March 2008, investigated over 600 email marketers&#8217; approach to data.&lt;/Emphasis&gt;&#160; &lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;After all, accurate data powers relevant targeting, which is proven to deliver the best results.&#160; &lt;/Paragraph&gt;
  &lt;Paragraph&gt;The findings showed that regular data cleaning has taken a back seat for many email marketers.&lt;/Paragraph&gt;
&lt;/FormattedContent&gt;</extract-unformatted>
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  <learn-more-formatted>&lt;p&gt;For further information about email marketing, download Econsultancy's &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census"&gt;Email Census&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (based on a survey of digital marketers) and the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-marketing-buyers-guide"&gt;Email Marketing Platforms Buyer's Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (particularly relevant for the UK market). See also the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-marketing-statistics"&gt;Email Statistics Compendium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</learn-more-formatted>
  <learn-more-unformatted>&lt;p&gt;For further information about email marketing, download Econsultancy's &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census"&gt;Email Census&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (based on a survey of digital marketers) and the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-marketing-buyers-guide"&gt;Email Marketing Platforms Buyer's Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (particularly relevant for the UK market). See also the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-marketing-statistics"&gt;Email Statistics Compendium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</learn-more-unformatted>
  <legacy-article-id type="integer">365471</legacy-article-id>
  <name>Data management is at the heart of good email marketing</name>
  <private type="boolean">false</private>
  <published-at type="datetime">2008-04-21T09:00:00+01:00</published-at>
  <slug>data-management-is-at-the-heart-of-good-email-marketing</slug>
  <tweetbacks-updated-at type="datetime">2009-04-29T23:27:51+01:00</tweetbacks-updated-at>
  <unpublished-at type="datetime" nil="true"></unpublished-at>
  <updated-at type="datetime">2009-10-13T09:36:47+01:00</updated-at>
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</blog-post>
