Whitepapers

from No Suppression to Over-Suppression

Why marketers need to nurture and cherish their data and avoid the costly mistake of removing actual customers through over-suppression.

Suppression is a marketing term coined in the early 1990's to describe the removal of obsolete records from marketing databases. Back then, many marketers played hard and fast with consumer data. Data hygiene was in its infancy, targeting was virtually non-existent and profiling was rudimentary at best - volume was the name of the game, the theory being that if you sent out enough something would stick in the end.

Consumers soon grew tired of the daily deluge of unsolicited mail and as a result, all direct mail became known as 'junk mail'; a term that has stuck even though direct marketing practice has improved beyond recognition over the past 20 years.
However, there are signs that the pendulum has swung almost entirely the other way and, rather than indiscriminately mailing consumers, marketers are in danger of removing actual customers from their databases.

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