Does Data Have Value?

Mark Roy, Chairman of the DMA Data Council, looks at the cost-saving and brand-enhancing benefits of data management best practice.

Could this recession actually be good for the data sector? Think about it. When money's too tight to mention and big is no longer beautiful, could leveraging more insight from customer and prospect data be a canny way to survive and even prosper during this god-awful downturn?

Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Tough times mean that we, as an industry, need to demonstrate more respectful relationship with customers by not playing fast and loose with their data, mailing deceased persons and/or boring punters senseless with mismatched offers. 

The benefits of using suppression files have long been a mainstay of my data management mantra. All self-interest aside, suppressing gone-aways and the deceased saves money, the environment and enhances brand image. Sure, there's an up-front cost. But if you had to choose between outlaying a few pence to suppress the name and address of a gone-away or deceased customer and needlessly paying upwards of a pound in fulfillment and postage for an offer which is destined for the nearest landfill (your customer's moved or died, remember), which would it be? Statistics would suggest the latter, unfortunately, given that UK companies are still wasting more than £50 million annually on mis-addressed mail.

Swapping post for digital is no 'magic' bullet, either. While Forrester Research's Annual E-mail Marketing Forecast predicted back in May that email spend will 'balloon' to $2bn (£1.2bn) by 2014 (a nearly 11% compound annual growth rate), spamming consumers into submission by inundating the average UK in-box with upwards of 9,000 unsolicited e-mails per annum over the next five years isn't exactly going to endear brands to consumers either.

Channel integration is, in fact, where the marketing best practice rubber is really hitting the response-rate road at present. Alongside demands for better data hygiene, if you add the likes of online lead generation (OLG) into the DM channel mix, one doesn't have to be clairvoyant to foresee that the data insight required of savvy marketers both now and into the future is going to be considerable if they want to optimise response rates and ROI. And the engine room driving all of these 'sticky', response-geared offers and content? Up-to-date, secure and properly permissioned customer and prospect data. My message to all 'one-offer-for-all'-type marketers wanting simplistic, single-channel marcoms solutions is thus: Exit onto new career paths. Now.  

Data should hence be the cornerstone of every marketing campaign. If this recession is teaching us anything it's to better understand and utilise data as a very real and valuable business asset. Data's importance and relevance across the entire marcoms space is such that I've been quoted recently as saying that data is the 'new black'. But perhaps I should swapping this fashionista analogy and joining with Data Strategy's David Reed in observing that, if unsuppressed data mismanagement's excesses are left unchecked, then direct marketing could instead become the 'new Tobacco'. For a supposedly mature, self-regulating industry, we urgently need to lift our game and affect a profound attitudinal shift - towards data hygiene and security, the environment as well as consumers - lest the public perception and effectiveness of our industry only further deteriorate. Because it's worth remembering that more than just customers are watching and gauging our performance. By collectively raising the suppression/data management bar and demonstrating to Westminster that we're capable of implementing both data best practice and stringent self-regulation, maybe we'll one day shed the 'junk mail' stigma once and for all.

The data challenges are many, certainly, but conquering them is far from impossible. Adopting a more lateral, linked-up approach to data management - inclusive of standardisation, suppression, segmentation, hygiene, acquisition and security strategies - can and will leverage more insight, increase response rates and ROI. This is going to be music to the ears of even the most recession-hardened CEO, believe me (I'm one of them!).  But be prepared. Given that the average B2B and B2C database degrades at upwards of 35 per cent and 14 per cent respectively each year, better data management definitely needs to be an ongoing project and not just a one-night stand.

So to answer the question, 'Does data have value?' I and others say a resounding 'Yes!'.