If you’re like most marketing departments you probably find yourself using more and more data to improve your profiling, your audience segmentation, and the performance of your marketing campaigns. Up until now, you may have also found that your existing business or consumer marketing lists as well as other data sources within your company have provided enough data for your needs.
But, as advances in information technology continue to give marketers more sophisticated analytics that gobble up data, you’ll need to find a reputable data vendor to work with.
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There’s a wide range of data vendors out there, so how do you find the data vendor that is the best fit for your data needs. Well, whether you are a corporate Marketing Manager, ad agency, call center, email service provider, or etc., the criteria for selecting a data vendor is pretty much the same. In addition to obvious attributes like financial stability, the reliability of their IT infrastructure and the skill sets of their delivery organization, the key criteria for selecting a data vendor are:
- Breadth and depth of data resources
- Data quality
- Data access interoperability
- Data licensing flexibility
- Full service capability
Breadth and depth of data resources – Whether you’re a B2C or B2B business, it is of the utmost importance that your data vendor has a robust, multi-channel database that spans the postal, email, phone, and mobile domains because they are essential ingredients for data vendor provided services like customer profiling and data appending.
At V12, our multi-channel Consumer Database is one of the largest in the direct marketing industry. The database is a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources and combines postal, email, phone, and mobile data, as well as 260+ selectors to improve targeting including demographic, geographic, lifestyle, interests, and behavioral data.
Our multi-channel Business Database is one of the largest multi-channel B2B databases available. Like our Consumer Database, our B2B database is a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources. It combines postal, email and phone data, as well as more than 20+ selectors to improve targeting including firmagraphic and contact level demographic data.
Data Quality – Accuracy and completeness are the key components of data quality. In today’s highly mobile society postal addresses, e-mail addresses, landline and mobile phone numbers change frequently. People opt-in and opt-out of e-mail marketing lists on a daily basis. So, a data vendor’s database must be up-to- date, and accurate, i.e. the data must be current and spelled correctly, and the records should have a full spectrum of data beyond basic contact information.
At V12 Group, the CASS mail-ready score of our B2C database is 99.2% with over 260+ selects that can be used for targeting, and our B2B database has been DPV confirmed to have 99% deliverable addresses with over 20 selects that include firmagraphic and contact level demographic data.
Data Access Interoperability – You want to be sure that the data access and delivery methods that a data vendor offers are compatible with your CRM and other data driven systems, so you don’t have to spend additional time and money converting data from one format to another. At the V12 Group, we provide our clients with access to the data in an operating format that best suits their operating infrastructure including access via: API, FTP, jump drive, look-up basis or a combination of these.
Data Licensing Flexibility – If you are going to be using a lot of data over an extended period of time, you also want to be sure that your data vendor is able structure your licensing deal so that it supports your marketing plans and objectives. At the V12 Group we are extremely flexible to give you access to the amount of data that you need (anywhere from the entire database to specific sections, like all e-mail addresses in a specified region or category, for example) over a certain period of time, and for specified uses (like modeling, appending, mailing, etc.) for a negotiated rate. Our rate structures include: monthly/quarterly fixed fee, CPM rate on a usage tier tied to a threshold, or a blend that flexes to accommodate your particular budget/usage scenario.
Full Service Capabilities – In today’s fast paced, hyper-competitive marketplace quality and speed-to-market are essential to superior results and a healthy ROMI. But, working with multiple vendors across your marketing supply chain can not only be extremely cumbersome, but also leave you vulnerable to errors and finger pointing when what you need is action and results. Look for a data vendor who offers a full suite of marketing data services. V12 Group is a full service provider capable of providing you with a complete ecosystem of marketing database services that spans your entire direct marketing supply chain from strategic planning to post campaign analysis including data acquisition and analysis, data appending and customer profiling as well as e-mail creative, design and execution.
Contact the V12 Group to learn more about how our suite of database, direct and digital marketing services can help you increase the relevance and effectiveness of your marketing programs and improve your return on marketing investment (ROMI).
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