Time for a fresh look at suppression?

 

For a long time, many marketers saw suppression as little more than negative marketing - spending money to reduce the size of their prospect lists - but that has changed in recent times with more and more marketers viewing suppression as simply another form of targeting. Antony Begley reports.

The arguments for direct mailers carrying out regular suppression are well rehearsed - cost savings, minimising brand damage, environmental impact and so on - but for many a long year many marketers seemed to pay little more than lip service to the notion. Even this far down the line it's still very common to see a 'ticking the box' approach to suppression rather than a full-blooded commitment to doing it and doing it well. But the tide may finally be turning, with marketers now beginning to view suppression not as a necessary evil, but rather as simply a basic form of targeting, and a core one at that.

Why this has happened only recently is anyone's guess but it's clear that all of the benefits of suppression dovetail rather neatly indeed with the world in which direct marketers find themselves. With the economic downturn showing very few signs of improving this side of 2012 and with the ICO growing sharper teeth all the time, it seems there's never been more need for marketers to get on top of their data and knock it into shape. Not only that, consumers are arguably more savvy than they've ever been about how they can make themselves heard if they think they've been wronged.

Look no further than the recent case of lead generation business Phruit and its high profile trail through the mud following the company's expulsion from the DMA after a series of TPS and CTPS breaches largely brought to light by customer complaints. Losing membership to the DMA may not be the end of the world, of course, but the case caught the eye of the offline and online media and there is no doubt whatsoever that the whole affair has damaged the Phruit brand significantly.

Make no mistake, the potential cost of failing to maintain the quality of customer and prospect data far outweighs the cost of putting measures in place to routinely keep on top of it.

The severity of the regulatory framework that marketers have to operate within is only going to increase, as Communisis Data Intelligence MD Jon Cano-Lopez points out: "TPS, as the lost legally supported environment has quite substantial penalties behind it although the Information Commissioner hasn't used them to any great extent."

The implication being that he may decide to make use of them sometime soon, and the evidence of recent history seems to suggest that this is indeed the case. The Information Commissioner's Office is demonstrating an increasing willingness to clamp down on malpractice and issue ever steeper fines.

Jo Bell, Commercial Director at deceased suppression provider Mortascreen, has become increasingly aware of this trend: "We've definitely seen a hardening in the stance of organisations like the DMA and the ICO, largely in response to the series of data failings we've seen in the media over recent months and years."

 

Think positive

Having said that, Cano-Lopez believes that the industry should be proud of its record in this area, especially around the MPS and the success it has enjoyed: "It's easy to get the wrong idea about our industry because it's the bad apples that end up in the press but we shouldn't forget how well we've managed ourselves as a rule.

"MPS is self regulating rather than a statutory structure and an important factor in maintaining the opt-out for postal mail has been the ease of use for consumers and the high uptake by the mailing industry. MPS is the jewel in the industry's crown as an industry we tend to take for granted."

So, the industry's track record is largely very good but the recent enthusiasm for effective, efficient suppression is perhaps driven less out of fear of punishment and more out of a positive desire to improve ROI.

Bell again: "Regulatory compliance is only one driver behind the growth of suppression. A desire to cut costs and deliver more targeted, effective mailings is a far bigger driver in our experience. Customers are realising the impact that poor quality data can have on the whole business, not just in the marketing department."

One of the key tenets of good direct marketing has always been 'target well and personalise'. Removing highly unlikely prospects is part of good targeting and that's what suppression is all about, is it not? The nuance is subtle, but it's important - so is it time that marketers made a concerted effort to view suppression as just another part of their targeting strategy?

REaD UK Sales Director Richard Anderson certainly seems to think so: "We've been trying to move marketers' mindsets away from the whole 'negative marketing' epithet for a long time because there's nothing negative about good suppression - it's all positive, and I fully welcome this shift to viewing suppression as another form of targeting because it's much closer to the truth. Why would marketers not want to make sure that their mailings are as accurate and targeted as possible?"

REaD's latest development in its drive to make suppression ever easier and more widely available is a partnership with Experian QAS that will see their bereavement and goneaway suppression files available through Experian's QAS Batch with suppression desktop software, a move that QAS MD Joel Curry thinks can only help fuel the drive to making regular suppression use a no-brainer for all direct marketers.

He says: "Suppression has long suffered from something of an image problem, thanks to all the negative connotations that go with it, but that shouldn't be the case. Good suppression reduces cost and waste and drives up ROI, it's that simple."

Commenting on the new agreement with REaD UK, Curry adds: "Bringing these top quality files [The Bereavement Register and the Gone Away Suppression file] to the desktop environment will make regular suppression and PAF-based batch cleansing even more accessible to a wider audience. It also allows marketers to eliminate the time lag that's inherent in outsourcing suppression work and is also likely to deliver a cost saving."

 

Minimising risk

Adam Leslie, Head of Data Sales & Solutions at Callcredit Information Group, is convinced that the merits of suppression are now firmly understood and, anecdotally at least, it's far less complicated to interest clients in dedicating a little more time and budget to suppression than it's ever been.

"Certainly at this higher of the market, most of our clients don't even question the merits of suppression any longer. Often they've spent literally millions building a brand, so why risk tarnishing it with poorly targeted, careless marketing communications?

"If the suppression cost is 50% the cost of sending something to a recipient who's no longer there, you've saved yourself 50%. And if the pack you're sending is high quality and therefore expensive, the chances are that you've saved yourself a lot more than 50%."

 

Suppression as targetting

Leslie also agrees that viewing suppression as part of a targeting strategy makes sense: "There are two principles behind targeting. First you've got positive overlays and then you have negative exclusions, but it's still all part of a wider targeting strategy. You're still refining and improving your mailing list at the end of the day."

Whatever it is that's driving this change in approach, it's clearly working and making a difference at the sharp end. According to The Software Bureau's David Murray, sales at his business through suppression are up "between 30% and 40%" a year since the launch three years ago of the ES Suppression module for his Cygnus solution, a remarkable figure. 

"Marketers are really well versed now in the reasons why suppression is core to them," he says. "Price should no longer be a concern because there are lots of ways to gain relatively inexpensive access to the most popular suppression files and most bureaux no longer see suppression as a revenue stream in its own right. The pieces of the jigsaw have all come together to make it easier than ever for marketers to do it and do it well.

Of course, Murray's Cygnus solution - the 'bureau in a box' - has been one of the key developments in bringing data cleansing and suppression to the masses with many direct clients and many bureaux now relying on it on a daily basis.

 

Article from Database Marketing, April 2011