Five Must-Know Terms and Trends by Accutips.com

Every industry has its own lingo—and direct marketing seems to have a more specific language than most. Make sure you've got your definitions straight for these five key direct marketing concepts.

1. Append/Reverse Append: This data enhancement solution helps companies improve their business and consumer data, expand customer touch points and increase their response rates. There are two key types of records most businesses want to append and reverse append: email and phone.

Email append overlays deliverable email addresses onto a customer file and returns a clean, permission-based list with the highest match rates possible. If a database consists solely of email addresses, the process can be reversed, and data can be enriched with phone and postal addresses.

Phone and reverse phone append can fill in data gaps to expand customer touch points by adding customer phone numbers to databases that currently contain only emails, names, or business titles. If a database contains only phone records, the process can be reversed to obtain email and postal address records.

2. Data Hygiene: This suite of "file-cleaning" solutions can help businesses acquire exact and correct addresses, improve mail deliverability, update their files with change of address records and more. Regular data hygiene impacts the bottom line by keeping a company's data clean, capturing more clients and helping to retain existing customers. Reputable data providers usually offer a range of data hygiene solutions, including:

* Data Consolidation and Standardization
* NCOA: The National Change of Address
* MaxCOA: Maximum Change of Address
* DSF: Delivery Sequence File
* DSF: Delivery Sequence File - Second Generation
* LACS: Locatable Address Conversion System
* CASS: Coding Accuracy Support System
* Deceased Processing
* National Do-Not-Call (DNC)

3. Merge/Purge is a data process that merges two or more lists or files together and then purges the file of duplicates. This process reduces postage and printing expenses for mailers. Mailers will often rent many different lists from various sources for a single campaign; in this case, a merge/purge process is essential.

4. Data Consolidation and Standardization, as listed above, is a particular type of data hygiene. This solution ensures that your addresses are standardized to meet the United States Postal Service requirements. The process includes:

* Validation and correction of street, city and state
* Street prefix, suffix and secondary address components are standardized
* ZIP+4 Codes are enhanced, added if missing and corrected
* United States Postal Service carrier Route Codes are added
* United States Postal Service Line-of-Travel data is added
* Delivery Point Bar Code data is added
* Undeliverable and non-forwardable addresses are identified and tagged

5. Compiled, Managed and Multi-sourced Lists are among the major list types in the direct marketing industry.

A compiled list is any list created from the compilation of public sources such as phone books, deed information, directories, newspapers and courthouse records.

A managed list is a type of compiled list: one that is continually updated to capture the newest information available. It can be a complex task to make sure compiled data is accurate and compliant with all laws and regulations.

Lastly, a multi-sourced list is comprised of many different sources. Some of the most reputable data providers will keep managed b-to-b lists of the major compiled commercial databases and consumer files including the major credit bureau databases. By maintaining all of these databases under one roof, multi-source list providers have the unique ability to identify and fill gaps found within individual data sources, thus providing the most comprehensive coverage possible.