“We only do digital” or “We can’t ask for too much information upfront” are refrains many data specialists will be all too familiar with if they have asked clients why they do not have postal addresses.
Even if we put the debate surrounding the relevance of direct mail in the digital age to one side, this is a worrying trend. It is being driven in part by prominent online methods of data capture and partly by the use of email addresses as the unique key in many CRM and campaign management systems.
So why should it be of concern? The negative impact of a lack of postal addresses can be felt at many levels of business to business communications. It puts a stranglehold on activity and limits progression.
Whilst communication is directed at individuals within a company, segmentation is typically based on company attributes (size, turnover and industry). These often need to be obtained from external reference sources. All reference sources, such as D&B and the Harte-Hanks technology database (CiTDB) are based around company name and address. Without this information the ability to fill gaps is significantly reduced.
External data attributes are also used for profiling and modelling existing customers to help drive upsell and cross-sell programmes, as well as finding prospects that look like your best customers.
Traditionally marketers want to understand all activity at a company or site through a single customer view. Unless you have address information this is difficult to obtain, especially where data comes from different sources. Increasingly B2B marketers want to look at account coverage across a country or region, and to understand how many contacts they have per account. If contacts are held in isolation and not linked to company sites, this is difficult to obtain.
The traditional scourge of B2B marketing – turnover rates of decision makers – is also compounded by an email-only approach. What happens when your contacts get promoted, go on maternity leave or leave the company? You either lose the accounts or have to invest in regular telemarketing to keep plugging the gaps.
So what’s the solution?
Even data experts understand that marketers need to minimise barriers for cold contacts signing up for e-newsletters or White Paper downloads. Inputting a postal address takes too long: why should they provide it when they only want to access electronic assets?
But if we want to facilitate better, more relevant marketing we need to work collaboratively on this. Establishing a culture where different departments understand the importance of postal data is vital. Investment in auto-fill tools to make it quick and easy for contacts to input their full address is worth considering.
Progressive profiling is also being used, obtaining different elements of information at different stages of the relationship. While there is a fine balance between getting optimum response from a campaign and collecting the nirvana of data needed for high quality marketing, ignoring this issue will result in databases that are single dimensional (i.e. email based), with limited value.
Nobody can afford that sort of short-termism in today’s competitive markets.
Suzanne Freestone, senior solutions consultant at Information Arts, a Harte-Hanks agency
