How clean is the data received by the cooperative databases? If you ask Abacus, a division of Epsilon, it can be pretty dirty.
Roughly 30% of the co-op’s clients fail to run their names through NCOA before submitting, said Brian Rainey, CEO of Abacus, speaking earlier this month at NEMOA’s annual conference.
That means about 5% to10% of the names mailed clients are undeliverable, and ending up in a landfill somewhere.
“If you’re looking and someone who is mailing upwards of 20 million books a year, and anywhere from 5% to 10% are undeliverable, that’s just a terrible waste of resources,” Rainey said.
So why is so much dirty data coming in? Rainey figures it’s because clients assume Abacus is going to clean the names before they are sold to another client.
“I encourage you to take the time and make sure,” he said. “Don’t assume that we’re doing the basics of modeling hygiene with our list processing.”
Good advice, although Abacus does run its data against NCOA.