Research report - Royal Mail Data Services - data-driven marketing

Research from Royal Mail Data Services reveals that quality, up-to-date contact data has the single greatest impact on marketing campaign response and conversion rates

• UK businesses ranked quality contact data as more important than the timing of a campaign, personalisation and creative execution in delivering results for marketing
• Despite this UK companies more often use unvalidated data for business decision-making and marketing, than they use customer data which has been validated
• Less than half (46 per cent) of UK businesses automatically validate customer address data gathered via their websites. Only 45 per cent automatically validate customer address data collected through internal systems
• For 67 per cent of UK firms, a postal-address is the most valuable piece of data they can collect for marketing purposes and the overwhelming majority (88 per cent) cite their websites as the primary source for gathering this information
• Royal Mail Data Services provides businesses with permissioned customer contact and address data, data quality, addressing and marketing services to help brands improve the performance of their marketing and customer communications campaigns.

London – 1 June 2016 – Research from Royal Mail Data Services, the specialist data business of Royal Mail Group, reveals that quality, up-to-date contact data has the single greatest impact on the response and conversion rates of marketing campaigns.

UK businesses ranked quality of contact data as more important than the timing of a campaign, personalisation and creative execution in delivering positive results for marketing.

Quality of contact data was placed first in order of importance (75 per cent) by survey respondents. They ranked it higher than targeting and analysis (ranked second with 73 per cent), campaign timing (70 per cent) and personalisation (also 70 per cent) which were both ranked third, and campaign creative, which often grabs the headlines of marketing news, is only ranked fourth (62 per cent).

Despite this UK companies more often use unvalidated data for business decision-making and marketing, than they use customer data which has been validated. Less than half (46 per cent) of businesses automatically validate customer address data gathered via their websites. Only 45 per cent automatically validate customer address data collected through internal systems.

For 67 per cent of UK firms, a postal-address is the most valuable piece of data they can collect for marketing purposes and the overwhelming majority (88 per cent) cite their websites as the primary source for gathering this information.

In more than half of businesses (55 per cent), responsibility for data strategy and collection sits with the marketing department. But for one in five businesses, sales or customer service control the collection of data. Where customer service or sales take the lead in collecting data management, this exposes businesses to the risk that the data collected will be specific to the needs of those functions and not be suited to targeting customers based on their individual needs.

Around a third of UK businesses (29 per cent) now say they have a central data management function. This is recognised as a mature, highly-effective way to ensure data is captured in an actionable, sustainable manner. The number of businesses now claiming to have a central data management function signals that greater attention is being paid to the role of data.

Jim Conning, Managing Director, Royal Mail Data Services, comments: “The simple truth is that marketers can’t convert customers they can’t reach. Our research reveals poor data quality remains the root cause of marketers’ struggle with campaign response and conversion rates.

“Marketers know that quality, up-to-date customer data is a prerequisite for campaigns to be effective. But if the business processes, including data management and validation, are not in place to ensure that data is accurate, permissioned and actionable then marketers will fall at the first hurdle.”