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Each issue of CMO Close-up features an interview with a CMO, as well as other marketing executives answering that issue's "Big Question."
This week's feature:
CMO Close-Up with Steve Liguori, executive director-global marketing at GE
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4 list hygiene best practices
Karen J. Bannan
Story posted: June 17, 2010 - 10:34 am EDT
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List hygiene has been a concern as long as email marketing has been around, and the basics are just that—basic. Opt-outs and opt-ins should be processed quickly, while internal lists should be synchronized so you don't miss anyone and risk a spam complaint. Inactive addresses or those that hard or soft bounce should be suppressed and possibly appended, while risky addresses—for example, sales@domain.com or spam@domain.com—should be removed immediately. But there's more to list management than the basics, said Bryce Marshall, director of strategic services for direct digital marketing company marketing firm Knotice. Here are four often-overlooked list hygiene tips to incorporate into your existing best practices.
- Don't overlook the new employee. Salespeople often bring their own contacts and email lists to a new job, which is a good thing, of course. However, unless you integrate a new employee's list with your own, you may end up inadvertently contacting someone who has opted-out or emailing that contact the same marketing message more than once.
“You need to treat it like any other data source,” Marshall said. “It's incumbent on any organization to review [a new employee's] list and make sure [there are] no conflicts or overlaps with internal data. You don't want that salesperson to be firing off to his list when a mass campaign is going out to the same data source.”
Of course, let that salesperson make contact first, letting his or her sources know that he or she has moved and they will be receiving messages from your brand or company, Marshall said.
- Do due diligence on a rented list. Any company that rents you a list should check your house list against their rented list to make sure they won't be emailing someone who has already opted out. Even if that person has given the list rental service permission to email, you'll want to respect their wishes when it comes to your brand or company, Marshall said. “The process should be part of the cost,” he said. “Any good provider will do this automatically.”
- Mesh sales cycles with list hygiene efforts. How often do you refresh data and perform list maintenance? While once a month is probably best for most companies, Marshall said, data and list management should reflect your sales cycle. “If your sales cycle is every 12 months, the data refresh isn't going to have to happen as often as a company that has customers with needs that change frequently,” he said. “Your data should always reflect the current state of the customer relationship, so you should update your lists as often as you update your products.”
- Bring every employee and department into the hygiene process. Companies—especially those that use outsourced customer service or contract salespeople—must scrub lists often, making sure changes and requests as well as customer additions that happen externally show up on internal marketing lists. This is why a formal CRM program can often save time and money. “You should have a centralized process to manage email opt-outs and additions, and make sure every contract and on-staff employee understands that it's their responsibility to interact with the CRM application and make changes as they happen,” Marshall said. “It's all about having a global as well as a local view of the customer.”
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3 Comments
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Craig Lindberg
MLT Creative, Partner
June 17, 2010 12:09 pm
Glad to see some concise best practices on an often overlooked subject. A great list database doesn't just happen. Like a good coach will say, you have to be able to execute well on the fundamentals before you start getting fancy.
Thanks!
Caryn Gray
Aprimo, B2B Solution Strategist
June 17, 2010 12:46 pm
Considering that data support segmentations, drive message relevance, and enable reporting and measurement, it is puzzling that many organizations do not invest enough time and resources to maximize data health and quality.
The points made in the original posts are indeed valid ones. I particularly like the last one, #4, and find a lot of truth in it. If you're I "inherited" a database with suspects, prospects, leads, etc. that did not support our B2B marketing segmentation and communication strategies for demand gen or lead scoring. We had a x-company team define needs -- and all perspectives were represented. We did some external list clean up with B2B list hygiene specialists and then called on our client-facing sales and account management colleagues to "add, edit, update or change" values per the team's direction. They're busy revenue-generating individuals so we gave them about 2 months to complete their edits.
At the end of the day, we got our database in ship-shape for marketing. Now we continue to produce reports that help us monitor breadth and depth of data coverage as well as to track changes in field value distributions, with alerts as to when a change is significant enough to warrant an intervention (e.g., external hygiene needed).
And, don't forget that when you use email deliverability services, you get hard and soft bounces that should help you automate email address hygiene, keeping your bounces low so you get delivered.
Hope this helps.
cg
Here's a case study for a global B2B client who took data management seriously. 7-digit savings:
http://www.aprimo.com/Customers_.aspx?ekfrm=722
Angela
June 17, 2010 12:59 pm
Thanks for the article. It is a good high level list of tips, but I need to find out more details.
What is the best way to scrub a list? I have been struggling with how to handle bounced emails. Should someone spend time trying to contact all bounced emails for the correct email address?
When you purchase new leads are you suggesting someone go in one by one to make sure there are no duplications? that would be extremely time consuming.
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