Data Services
When it comes to a database, the adage “garbage in/garbage out” absolutely epitomizes the difference between a database that can hurt or help you. SFG runs the cleanest database services in the industry, running NCOA and several other address hygiene processes in multiple steps of each process that uses customer information.
Address Cleansing
With SFG’s in-house NCOA Link service, our partners can realize substantial cost savings, decreased delivery time and lower customer service issues all within the usual update cycle.
Our NCOA updates also play a pivotal role in reducing mailer costs and increasing responses by offering our direct marketing partners the ability to cleanse their mail files at the beginning and again at the end of the merge process. This provides a significant reduction in list rental costs, wasted mailing pieces and wasted postage. It can also increase response rates by allowing better targeting to get mailing pieces into the hands of the right prospects at the right addresses.
SFG uses industry-recognized third-party software for address standardization or “CASS” coding. Our software uses delivery point verification in its coding process as is required by the USPS for several mail classes.
Utilizing our unified relational database that integrates customer information from all direct marketing business models, SFG has closed the loop with Move Update and greatly reduced the Undeliverable As Addressed (UAA) mail to put into the mainstream for its clients. All customer records are stored in one location, making a change of address notice applicable to multiple revenue, title, invoice or renewal streams. One change of address is received, and every mailing list is updated automatically.
Merge/Purge
SFG takes the traditional merge/purge process to a higher level. Our enhanced merge/purge solution incorporates industry-leading techniques utilizing a hybrid approach to identify and eliminate duplicate records from a direct marketing campaign.
More comprehensive than other merge/purge systems, SFG’s merge/purge solution is able to meet all of your direct marketing needs, resulting in duplication elimination, cleaner mail files, reduced costs, and improved response rates.
Our enhanced process includes:
- Data hygiene and postal presort with in-house CASS™, Delivery Point Validation (DPV®), and NCOALink® processing before and after merge/purge
- Customizable data hygiene scrubs and testing for zip+4, prison identifiers, numbers in names, and numerous other segments
- Over 1.5 trillion algorithm combinations of tightness/looseness on a dozen address block elements and custom user-defined fields for flexible de-duplication options
- List priorities that can be set at the list and/or list group levels and list interactions that can be prioritized between multiple concurrent mail campaigns
- True random selection of records with identical list priorities within lists, list groups, and between all remaining lists
- Multiple output formats including customized inkjet formats as needed
- Access to archived promotion history and support for email campaigns
- Input- or output-based pricing to best fit your needs
- Optional overlay enhancement and modeling services
- List Processing/Segmentation
List Processing/Segmentation
SFG’s merge/purge services include importing/translating rented lists, list selection on house names, industry-standard and custom suppression lists, and reuse of prior lists, in addition to any special requests from you or your list manager.
SFG works with list brokers and list managers to provide list rental services for our partners. We receive list rental orders from list brokers or partners via email and fax and provide list rental file distribution options that range from secure FTP positing (in-house or external) to various magnetic media formats.
We also offer list suppression, including standard (DMA, DMA deceased, do not rent and bad address) on a per-list basis, the ability to apply suppresses to specific key codes within a promotion, match-key suppression, the ability to suppress product buyers by order type/history and global suppress.
For more in-depth information on all our Data Services, visit our Data Services website.
