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Improving Your Merge/Purge
Catalog Age,
February 1999 issue
Peter Girard
interviewed
Joe Balaban,
Vice President of Business Development
at
Anchor Computer, Inc.
A quick way to sabotage any
mailing is to take the merge/purge process for granted, says Joe Balaban, vice
president of business development at Farmingdale, NY-based service bureau Anchor
Computer. Here, Balaban offers specific tips on how to work with your supplier
to ensure a successful merge/purge project:
- Make certain
your service bureau knows what to expect. If you plan on following
your mailing with a telephone campaign, for instance, make sure your service
bureau knows to check for telephone numbers. Or if you need a minimum number of
names for a mailing, tell the service bureau so that it can notify you if your
list falls short after the merge/purge.
- If you’re a
business-to-business cataloger, make sure your service bureau is familiar with
B-to-B issues. Business addresses
generally have more fields than consumer addresses, which can make the
merge/purge process more challenging.
- Always run your
list against the Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File (DSF2). This file can identify
undeliverable addresses and sort businesses from residential addresses.
- When possible,
mail only to ZIP + 4 addresses. But be wary of software
programs that assign ZIP + 4 codes based on address location. Such programs will
assign a code even to nonexistent addresses by estimating what the code would be
if the address existed.
- On b-to-b
lists, consider eliminating addresses of establishments with histories of bad
debt.
Balaban has found that unprofitable business locations often remain unsuccessful
regardless of who operates them.
- Read – and be
sure you understand – the entire merge/purge report. Beyond checking the
percentage of dupes, look for specific records and duplicates you knew of
beforehand. Only the complete list will show you these. If you notice missing
records or systematic problems, the bureau can correct them and run the
merge/purge again.
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