If you have been running a marketing or customer database for any length of time you will probably find that you have duplicated records. This can occur where the input is not quite the same, for example your sales staff may have taken a customers name over the phone and entered Mr John Doe or Mr John Dough. They may even have given the client two different addresses, for example 52 Strand and 52 The Strand, on your database. Of course it is also possible that the customer has just been entered twice with exactly the same details each time.
In this case, you need to run a deduplication process on your database before you can send out targeted marketing information to the customer or use the database for any kind of analysis of customer sales, demographics or history. Deduplication works by comparing fields on your database both to find exact matches and also to identify possible matches (it may use a technology called soundex to compare names for example).
Quite apart from the additional cost of sending duplicate mailings, many consumers find it extremely annoying to receive two copies of a mailshot and this may have an unwanted effect on your business and may even result in complaints.
Here at Technologies4Targeting we specialise in deduplication of a wide range of customer and marketing databases. By either using our skilled staff or by purchasing our dedupliation tools you can be sure that your database will contain the correct data for individuals and be compilent with the Data Protection Act in the UK 1998 which states that amongst other things that data must be:
1. adequate, relevant and not excessive 2. accurate and up to date
For more details of our database deduplication services please contact us at the address or phone number at the bottom of this page, alternatively you may like to continue to read about the rest of our marketing database solutions available in the UK.
Technologies4Targeting Limited. Geneva House, 3 Park Road, Peterborough, PE1 2UX, UK Tel : (+44) 01733 890790