Offshore Data Capture
OFFSHORE DATA CAPTURE
As companies must adhere to the ever-tightening rules of Privacy Regulations, which exist to protect an individuals’ right to privacy, it can seem increasingly tricky for them to view (non-EU) offshore data capture as a viable option.
However, as the benefits seemingly outweigh the difficulties, more companies are beginning to embrace the offshore method, but there is still a need for marketers to gain a greater understanding of the process to decide if it will work for them.
Data Management Bureau, Qbase, provides offshore data capture for a number of clients, including stationary chain-store Staples. Mark Higginson, Database Consultant at Qbase, discusses the main issues every marketer should be aware of when considering offshore data capture.
“One of the main attractions of offshore data capture is the clear cost benefit. Outsourcing data in this way means that costs are reduced because companies aren’t paying for staffing, recruitment, or the technical maintenance needed to capture large volumes of data.
“If you consider the amount of time needed to process large volumes of customers’ contact details, outsourcing data to a non-EU country can be very cost effective, particularly for larger companies needing to capture, validate and format high volume schemes, such as hand written loyalty card registrations. What’s more, economies of scale also play a part in this market as ultimately, the higher the volume of data, the more economical the cost.
“Whilst appealing, cost advantages mustn’t allow marketers to be blinded to other key offshore data capture issues, which must be considered when adopting this process. Many marketers are simply not aware of the need to comply with the increasingly stringent European Commission Privacy Regulations. These exist purely to ensure adequate safeguards are provided for personal data transferred from the EU, to countries outside the Union and failure to adhere to these regulations can result in heavy penalties for a company.
“When dealing with the intricate process of offshore data capture, this protection for the data when either transferring it, or allowing access to the information from another source, absolutely has to be forefront of mind, to prevent the security of important customer data being compromised.
“Another big factor is that companies’ must be able to maintain a large element of control with the data. For example, it is only possible for Qbase to send the large quantity of Staples data offshore for capture, because once the forms have been scanned (in the UK), they are held within a secure Qbase network and this information never leaves until it is uploaded into its final destination, the Staples server, seven days later.
“Therefore there’s no question of any confidential customer data being cloned or accessed in an unauthorised way, as the data cannot be downloaded, only viewed as an individual scanned registration and data entry form on-line.
“However, the offshore data capture bureau still needs external access to the scanned data and a function to upload the captured information and this aspect presents a sticking point for many bureaux.
“To allow this access, Qbase built a specially designed data capture website which can be accessed offshore. Because the data capture process is effectively carried out from our server, and the data doesn’t leave our system, security is maximised, European Privacy Regulations are adhered to, and we retain control of the process.
We also have in place a contract and non-disclosure agreement with the data entry company, to ensure they’re aware of their responsibilities.
“The other major consideration for offshore data capture is the quality issue. In non-EU countries where English is not predominantly the first language, the accuracy of captured data may be at risk. Many offshore bureaux will utilise a ‘look-up’ file, featuring a list of UK forenames, so that if they are looking at a handwritten form and are unable to make out the name, they can refer to the look-up file for clarification. To speed up offshore address entry and ensure the address is correct to PAF then validated, Qbase has embedded an address look-up and validation in the form.
“Yet not all offshore bureaux use this file. So if the person doing the data entry is looking at a name on a form which is not overly clear, without the use of a look-up file, they may have no point of reference as to how a name should be spelt and enter an inaccurate record. That’s why, to ensure data accuracy, it’s paramount that a Quality Control process is put in place when the data is returned to the UK. All of the data sent offshore by Qbase comes back to us to undergo a final QC check, before being returned to the client and this is Qbase’s main differential.
“So what does the future hold for the offshore date capture market?
Any price sensitive market runs the risk of becoming saturated by those claiming to offer a cheaper service than the next company. The reality is that companies may be getting a lower price, but this is often at the expense of the data’s quality and security.
“Over the last twelve months, we’ve seen major UK companies bringing their offshore call centre operations back to the UK. This is symptomatic of how customers may initially be impressed with lower costs, but in time it always comes back to the quality of what the customer receives. No doubt the data industry as a whole will soon reflect this view and while cost will always remain a factor, the quality will once again become top of the agenda.”
Charity Marketing
CHARITY MARKETING
Charities require help and generosity to operate and traditionally, a large majority of their funding comes from legacies. Although it is reported that only 40% of legacies received each year originate from people who are already contained within a charity’s database, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the other 60% are from random givers who the charity have never been in contact with before.
Data management bureau, Qbase, provides data collection strategies and offers solutions to help charities plan and implement pro-active marketing campaigns. Commercial Director, Mark Robinson finds that there are a number of issues to consider in order to help overcome any lack of knowledge about a legacy.
It is likely that a small portion of the unidentified legacies are completely unknown to the charity, although the majority of people will have some kind of emotional connection to that charity. An example of this could be via a member of their family with whom the charity has helped in the past. This emotional link can often be a stronger connection (in terms of providing legacies) than that of someone who regularly gives money. In order to help communicate with those people and any other person who expresses an interest in its work, it is essential for charities to develop a data capture strategy that covers all supporter touchpoints, from the first point of contact with someone.
Many charities rarely know about those emotional connections and it is poor data collection at the touchpoints which contributes to this. Charities should be communicating with pledgers before the legacy arrives (when the person has simply made a pledge to leave money) not only to help more of the pledges become legacies, but also to say thank you and acknowledge the fact that the person is considering leaving money to the charity.
One simple area for improvement is data collection via websites for example. A person may browse a charity website for information and support because of circumstance and by providing a means of registering that person’s information to capture their data, this would allow the charity to begin communicating with the potential legator about its work. Similar improvements could be made when a person requests information. Capturing their data at that point and following up with continued communication will prove beneficial, however, it is important to note, that any data collection strategy must of course, comply with the Data Protection Act.
To find out more about the individuals and how they may wish to contribute, relevant captured information could then be supplied to companies like Qbase, to create propensity models where the data can be matched with external demographics such as age, income, financial worth and if they are a charity supporter etc. This allows the charity to learn and predict the likelihood of a person becoming a legator so that they can tailor their marketing communications accordingly. Therefore, in the years to follow as people leave legacies, the charity will have a communication history with the person resulting in fewer legators being completely unknown at the time the contribution arrives.
Such profiling models are sometimes used to try and identify legators of the future without any other information, knowledge or previous contact with those people. Although regularly practiced, this usually provides minimal uplift, but if the charity has previous data on those people and knows that there is already some link present, the uplift will be more significant. Simple data facts such as areas of the website viewed by an individual, number of visits to the website, factsheets downloaded, etc can help to identify the level of interest that a person has in the charity. This kind of information, when combined with demographic data can result in more predictive models being built.
Finally, another point to consider is that people move around and someone who makes a pledge to a charity at the point of a will being written for example, might change addresses several times before the legacy arrives. In this case, there is no means of communicating with the person to say thank you and keep them informed of their work.
One solution used by Qbase is to combine a range of data sets, such as Electoral Roll, Census, PAF, NCOA, etc to enable individuals to be located at their new address. This kind of service is invaluable in maintaining contact with supporters who are likely to be high value in the future and is similar to the kind of “tracing” systems used by the debt collection industry to locate individuals.
Essentially, charities need to work towards improving data capture functions throughout supporter touchpoints and develop better strategies to obtain that information. Predominantly, of the 60% of unknown legacies, the majority will have had some link to the charity before but to combat this lack of knowledge, improved data capture strategies at all touchpoints between a person and the charity will help with understanding past, present and future behaviour. By working harder and being more pro-active with data rather than re-active, charities will be able to improve communication channels with its current and future legators which are crucial for a charity’s survival.
Maximising Delivery Success
Quality Address Management Key to
Maximising Delivery Success
Data quality is often low on the agenda for many organisations, but to maximise the opportunity of contacting the correct individual with any key mailing piece that has taken time to put together, address management should be taken very seriously.
It is estimated that over £70m is wasted annually through undeliverable and misdirected mailings. Poor quality addressing also causes irreversible damage to the brand.
Data Management Bureau, Qbase sees an amazingly varied approach to data capture. Database Consultant Mark Higginson discusses the factors that affect data management and what should be considered to achieve success.
Data management can often be the most undervalued and least-worked asset within a company yet it could yield significant additional revenues if planned and managed appropriately. Quality address management is crucial to the success of a marketing campaign but a recurring question that needs deliberating is ‘how do you define a quality address?’
There is a long standing argument between address purists who believe that the Royal Mail Postal Address File (PAF) is the only address to adhere to and those who believe that the PAF doesn’t hold enough information to maximise the delivery of direct mail.
Although there are some benefits of using the Royal Mail PAF standard, particularly with consumer data, it can also cause difficulties and companies should consider all angles when deciding on what will benefit them.
The PAF file contains the UK’s 26.5 million postal addresses and changes at a rate of over 400,000 records per year. It carries the essential address components that are required to deliver a piece of mail.
Many of our clients tend to collect more information than exists on PAF. For consumer addresses, this could be a vanity address such as ‘Rose Cottage’. Unless Rose Cottage is the registered name of the premises, it won’t exist on PAF. A local postman will know where Rose Cottage is but if companies wish to adhere to the PAF standard, this component will be removed. Whilst this will not render the mailing piece undeliverable, it may irritate a valued customer.
Difficulties in using the PAF standard address tend to arise more in the business to business world rather than the consumer world. When targeting a known contact within a large business, the data captured address is likely to contain a department or floor. PAF will not contain this information so anyone looking to make the address match the PAF standard will lose this vital delivery information.
‘Anecdotal’ instructions such as this, which don’t exist in a Royal Mail PAF standard, means businesses need to consider at what cost the loss of this information is when targeting a large organisation. For example, how many Mr Smith’s exist at 1 Canada Square?
For Qbase, a combination of the automated PAF route and manual intervention of the standard address yields the best results. Spelling errors, abbreviations and poor structures can be resolved but the important personal information is retained.
Companies need to strike a balance between the PAF standard and non-standard address.
The key lies in defining what data should be captured from the very beginning. Companies collecting data through call centres, websites and sales centres et cetera, should consider what they are likely to need and how many fields should be made available.
When considering data capture through websites, for example, most companies now opt for the quick address approach. The user only needs to provide their postcode and premise number and the rest of the address will auto-populate. This means that the address captured automatically meets the PAF standard.
However, there is no room for additional information, e.g. ‘Rose Cottage’. Therefore companies can provide the user with an option to confirm or amend their address, offering the opportunity to add ‘Rose Cottage’. This is a good way of capturing the information, but as we have seen on almost every web based data collection system to date, ‘Mr Mickey Mouse, Disney Street, Disney City’, will invariably make an appearance.
In order to combat this, as a data management bureau, we have had to build up an extensive list of known felons, ranging from ‘Mr Tony Blair, 10 Downing Street’ to ‘Homer Simpson, Springfield’. These rogue entries can then be suppressed from campaigns.
In order to avoid this happening in the first instance, a customer must be given a reason to provide their correct details. Incentives such as free gifts or exciting people with relevant future communications can be successful options. People only tend to make up their details if they think they will be bombarded with unwanted direct mail. It’s important to make it clear to customers that their information will only be used to benefit them.
These issues don’t tend to occur when collecting B2B data or when a purchase is involved. However, considering the capture of additional data is still important. Allowing additional fields for a company name, job title and department to be supplied, but not making them compulsory, is a workable solution.
If these fields are not provided, the information tends to end up in the address fields and a huge amount of time needs to be spent manually searching for information such as job titles and departments in the address fields.
Again, we have look-up tables that allow us to search for string patterns in the address fields. These account for all sorts of spelling errors in job titles. If we were to re-build the addresses using the PAF standard, we would simply drop this information from the address. Whilst this reduces the production costs for the client, it also means that important information is being lost.
We also see a number of companies using free form address capture, where a box is provided and the customer is expected to provide their name and address details in the space provided. This can lead to all kinds of format issues. For example, if the form is hand-written, it is open to miss-interpretation, especially if the data capture is being completed off-shore. A number of these issues are combated by simply providing the customer with a clear structure to follow – Title, Forename, Surname, Company (if applicable), Address1, Address2, Address3, Town, County, Postcode, Telephone, etc.
Catering for poor hand-writing is never going to be easy. We have to conduct stringent quality checks on this kind of data capture to ensure that a name captured as Danlel, is corrected to Daniel. This is a very manual, time consuming and quite difficult process, but is sometimes unavoidable if this style of capture is a company’s only option.
With so much to consider when planning address management, the best solution is often a difficult decision for companies.
Different data capture structures work in different ways and companies should decide on what will benefit them. If limited space is made available on your printed material for the address, you cannot include everything. Your options are to either provide more white space for the address or exclude certain details. If you manage your goneaway returns, you can see the effect of reducing the printed information.
Of course, data collection is not just about the delivery of direct mail. Good data collection also allows for demographic analysis and from this perspective, the more information available, the better. The key is in the planning, if you can answer the ‘what, why and how’ questions, you are well on your way.
DATA SEGMENTATION: UK vs. USA
DATA SEGMENTATION: UK vs. USA
As markets constantly evolve, becoming more crowded and increasingly competitive, professionals face new challenges to improve direct marketing campaigns.
Data Management Bureau, Qbase, who recently expanded into North America, report an increased demand for more cost effective, high quality data, which provides improved return on investment for companies, is resulting in improved data segmentation techniques becoming more significant to deliver.
But what challenges face marketers, what help is on offer and does it differ between markets across the world? Qbase compares the role of data segmentation within the UK and USA marketplace and discusses the importance of improved techniques for successful campaigns.
Mark Robinson, Qbase UK’s Commercial Director comments: “The sheer size of the USA marketplace, compared to the UK, makes for some interesting differences in the role of segmentation and analysis in general.
“In the UK, we are seeing an increasing use of prospect scoring and propensity modelling to gain advantage with marketing campaigns. This technique aims to identify demographic similarities between prospects and the best customer segment. Through modelling techniques, prospects can then be scored based on their ‘similarity’ to customers.”
The UK often faces difficulties in achieving competitive advantage due to the comparatively low volumes of data available. This results in competitors using the same prospect data sources. Segmentation techniques such as propensity modelling are therefore becoming necessary for improving targeting.
The USA, however, is still gaining advantage through using available data before turning to modelling as there is such a huge quantity of new sources available. Although, the realisation of the further benefits these data segmentation techniques provide, is dawning on the USA market.
Chuck Backus, Qbase US Chief Technology Officer comments: “Competition in the USA is equally as high and there’s a quiet movement to involve more analytics and modelling in targeted selections. Marketers want advantage over competitors and we are finding increasing interest in exploring customer behaviour and then extending prospect definition through the use of external demographics.
“Our UK team has already proven the value of this approach. Our challenge and opportunity in the USA is to bring the costs of analytics and modelling into balance. Marketers are being forced to find better returns and Qbase US has a viable solution.”
Reducing costs for marketers in both the UK and USA is becoming increasingly significant with more pressure being put on marketers to find affordable solutions.
Propensity modeling is an affordable technique which results in companies using data more efficiently, to produce improved results and less wastage. The technique allows prospects to be ranked according to the likelihood to buy, based on whatever characteristics are available (e.g. demographic data, geographical area, transactional behaviour). Where previously, mass marketing with little targeting has been used, modelling allows individuals to be scored and ranked so marketers can spend more on the high propensity prospects and less on the low propensity ones. This technique means that marketing budgets and activity can be apportioned, less money and marketing material wasted and ROI improved.
The marketplace is becoming more educated to the benefits of modelling with the popularity of such techniques increasing in the UK and the USA.
Chuck continues: “In the USA, data is abundant. Cheap disk, fast processors and interactive online systems have given businesses more opportunity than ever to capture vital information at the point-of-sale. However, mining mountains of data hasn’t typically been a task within the reach of marketers but new, more affordable solutions with quick turnaround allow marketers to take advantage.”
Increases in other business expenses i.e. postal costs and a movement towards more environmentally friendly enterprises is also contributing to the exploration of new techniques.
“Postal rate increases in the USA have had a significant effect on the cost of direct marketing campaigns. By only targeting those people who are most likely to respond, companies are not only given advantage, but are preventing waste and reducing costs.” Chuck added.
The forthcoming changes to UK postal rates by Royal Mail will also have an impact. The change will take account of size as well as weight, (called “Pricing in Proportion” or PiP). PiP will mean some mail prices will go up – for example, bulky items that are light in weight – and some will come down - it will be cheaper to post heavy catalogues and books. As always, this will be a positive change for some companies but a hindrance to others, with improved targeting becoming even more important for some businesses as their postage costs increase.
Legislation differences between the UK and USA can also contribute to the challenges faced with data segmentation functions. Privacy laws in the UK mean that appending relevant demographic data to records is often not a possibility and can be expensive for those available demographics. In the USA, the opposite is true, with much greater volumes of demographics available at a lower cost.
More demographic information available within customer datasets will result in a stronger model being built. The future of modelling in the USA could therefore become even more cost-effective than the UK.
Mark comments: “In the UK, there are greater costs attached to finding and appending suitable demographics. Clients take a risk - a model can only be based on the data available so if the relevant information is not available, the model may not be able to significantly differentiate between high and low propensity prospects.”
Reducing costs for clients, helping them gain advantage over competitors and improving a company’s return on investment is the key requirement of data segmentation in the UK and USA. Although the methods, approach and value proposition are the same, varied contributing factors and challenges need to be considered to allow each country to deliver for a customer and meet their needs.
In the UK, there is an emerging trend whereby clients are moving towards modelling as a means of improving ROI because of the challenges faced – the small size of the marketplace, low volumes of data available and tighter legislation. Companies are becoming more responsive to testing the new techniques to help improve the business. In the USA, suppliers are working towards striking a balance between the use of the large volumes of new data sources still available to gain advantage while turning clients’ attention towards the benefits of such data segmentation techniques as a cost effective and more efficient tool.
