From The Marketing Side district name a poor choice to include in the merge / purge logic . Most service bureaus dedupe institutions based on street addresses and this can also pose a challenge when schools are on street corners or when there are two or more schools at a location .
Names Must Be in the Proper Fields
Address issues exist , but they are limited . Many more challenges arise when deduping names . There are a number of reasons why most companies have issues with the names in their house files . First , many orders are received on purchase orders that don ’ t include the name of the actual buyer , but rather the name of a purchasing agent . Second , most order entry systems are unfamiliar with the school market . Consequently , the number of fields and the length of the fields aren ’ t sufficient to accommodate complete school or district names , addresses and / or shipping instructions . When an order entry clerk has to get creative with data entry the likelihood that that record will dedupe with a rented record declines significantly .
The more names that are entered into your customer files in an inconsistent manner , the lower the deduplication will occur . For example , if we have a house record where the contact ’ s name “ Mary Smith ” is in the same field as a delivery identifier such as “ Room 227 ,” the merge / purge program will not recognize this as a duplicate against a rented record for “ Mary Smith ”.
Many order entry personnel are less concerned with the integrity of the data fields than they are of making sure the order is entered quickly and fulfilled and delivered correctly . A good marketing manager will interact with the order entry people to make them aware of the importance of consistency in data entry .
It ’ s Costing Money and Much More
A typical cost for a catalog “ in the mail ” is about 70 cents . Thus for
every hundred duplicates the mailer wastes $ 70 and for every one thousand duplicates the mailer wastes $ 700 . But that ’ s just the beginning . The mailer also makes a bad impression of the school secretary who distributes the mail and the recipient as well .
And there ’ s more . One technique many mailers use is to match their customer files against a rental database . By tagging the matching schools , they can mail more educators in schools where they have customers than in schools where they do not . But if your customer file is unkempt you will miss a number of matches rendering this marketing strategy less effective .
The idea of renovating and cleaning your house files can be daunting , but there are numerous marketing advantages to maintaining a clean file . There are many more order entry systems on the market today and they are much more user friendly than older programs . One example is www . capterra . com , a website that lists over 60 different order entry software packages , including a brief review and the website address for each one . n
BOB STIMOLO , EDmarket ’ s Official School Market Consultant , is President of School Market Research Institute a full service marketing and research firm . SMRI provides direct mail and email lists and services exclusively to school marketers . To learn more go to www . smriinc . com or contact
Kathleen Bill at 800-838-3444 x201 .
Matilyn Garvin 2018 John L . Spalding Memorial Scholarship Winner
Sponsored by : GA School Supply
The EDmarket Chairman ’ s Advisory Committee has selected Matilyn Garvin as the 2018 John L . Spalding Memorial
Scholarship recipient . She will be attending the University of Georgia this fall and plans to major in Veterinary Science .
essentials | www . edmarket . org 29