How clean was my database then!

Not so long back I started database marketing with a squeaky clean database. My biz flourished with impressive revenue from targeted email. Time moved and with it the my customers too moved. Result was high email bounce from email campaign!

“33% of email addresses change annually.”

— Jupiter Research

Too many non-existing or invalid email addresses in the campaign will result in flood of undelivered mails in the campaign. Such hard email bounces will always carry the risk of your IP address or your SMTP server being blocked by ISP's.

Now it has reached a point that my email campaign has turned unproductive and even damaging my reputation. I've forced with two question.

Shall I hit on delete and erase the entire old database

or

Shall I salvage the existing email address & get deliverable email address

Then I hit on the idea to use email change of address(ECOA) process to retrieve email address from the dirty pile.

What's NCOA process?

NCOA process compares the customer's data with the National Change of Address database to find individuals or companies who have moved. The NCOA database contains the recent address of individuals, families or companies that have moved to a new location and those who have filed change of address with the USPS.

NCOA process performs the following vital screening on your email database:

• Identify un-deliverable email addresses- "dead" email ids
  
  
• Identify incorrect and correct obvious errors( typo mistakes, such as jdramse@aool or djane@yaho.com.
  
  
• Locates prank email address, such as asdf@hotmail.com and test@gmail.com.
  
  
• Identify and remove email ids such as abuse@hotmail.com from your mailing list
  
  
• Remove duplicates email address from your database, such as same name entered in different variation( prefix,title case etc)

NCOA process acts like a preventive doze against sweepage of email address in your database. With this process you can reconnect with your customers before your competitors find them.

That's a great way to clean your database and minimize bounces and customer defection. Next time, act early on data cleansing to maintain the sheen of your database. In this way your investment in database marketing is protected and viable revenue is guaranteed!