If you happen to run a local retail store, or are the marketing director for a national fortune 500 retail giant, communicating with your customers is priority number one. And collecting your customer’s contact information is the first step to doing that effectively. But collecting customer data is easier said than done. No matter what processes you use, the results can be rife with input errors, misinformation, or worse. You may end up with a valid email address, but not a valid name or phone number. The bad data ends up collecting dust and never getting used, leaving a portion of your customer base in limbo.

What if there was a solution that could help put that bad data back to work for you? Instead of tossing aside unknown data after you go through the email verification and hygiene process, retailers may also want to start considering having another look by appending incomplete “dusty” data. But what does that mean exactly? Is there really a way to take a small piece of customer information and add more to it? Yes, there is; keep reading to learn more.

What is Data Appending?

Data Appending is simply filling in the missing pieces of your data, completing the puzzle you’ve already started. As long as you have some sort of information such as an email, phone number, or name, we can often get you the rest, revealing the complete customer picture and essentially saving data that might otherwise have been lost or set aside.

What is Forward Append?

A forward append means that you already have a name or address on file of an individual and you are seeking more information such as a phone number, email, demographics, property data, or vehicle information.

Forward appending is considered the most common type of append because companies usually have a name, but need to fill in the missing information.

What is Reverse Append?

Reverse appends is when you obtain one field of data and use it to return all other data that can be tied to it. Let’s say, for example, a business wants to send out a marketing campaign but wants to personalize it. They have a list of valid emails, but no full names. What can they do? They can reverse append their data using the email addresses, and receive the names, and any other information they may need to make the email campaign more personalized such as demographics or interests.

Reverse appending is open for almost any dataset, from names, to email addresses or phone numbers. Reverse appending match rates are not as good as forward appending. Forward appending is known to be more accurate and the process takes less time than the reverse appends.

What is Fractional Appending?

Fractional Appending is a mix between both forward and reverse appends. For example, if you have a name and an email, you can get a postal address, which can be extremely useful for reaching out to your customers with a direct mail campaign.

Webbula for Data Appending

If you’re a marketer working in retail, you’ve most likely found yourself scratching your head after an email data verification and hygiene test wondering why so much data turned out to be incomplete, wondering why you wasted so much marketing effort collecting customer data only to be left holding an incomplete picture. The good news is, the next time this happens, don’t panic. Webbula insightData can append your troublesome data and enhance your list, making you better prepared for your next email campaign.

So clean your email lists with Webbula cloudHygiene, and append the rest of your data with Webbula insightData. InsightData will enhance and append your customer list with missing information like emails, addresses, phone numbers, and demographic segments. With insightData you will truly understand who your customers are, their interests, and their cross-channel behaviors to better enable sending targeted and effective email campaigns.

Don’t be afraid, append your data with Webbula insightData. To learn more about insightData visit Webbula.com