Brands are built on trust, as long as they deliver then the product or service will be desired and a premium can be charged. Anything that detracts from brand values will have an impact on how it is perceived. Branding is not only the physical attributes, great care and attention is paid to the presentation of the brand, millions can be spent in the media, first to build the image and then to maintain it.

It is the little things that go wrong that can start the chipping away at the brand’s status, if the media, who are complicit in building the brand, suddenly start turning away from it, then the decline can get magnified.

Even more so these days with the advent of social media, when will it be acceptable to remove ‘social’ as an adjective and just accept it all as part of the ‘media’?

The paranoia that companies feel is reflected in their need to continually monitor their brand profile across all media.

So make sure that the little things are right through data cleansing, don’t ring people who are on TPS, don’t send mailings to the deceased, don’t send mailings to people who don’t want them by using MPS suppression.

Get the little things right and help preserve the brand.

If you're performing telemarketing, you need to ensure you check each number you call against the TPS register before you call or you could end up with a fine of up to £5,000.

The best way to make sure you're on the right side of the law is to automate the process of TPS checking so you can't accidentally call a TPS registered number. To that end Data8 have today released a plugin for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that ensures telephone numbers are TPS checked as soon as they are added to your database.

Available as a custom workflow activity, you can shape your TPS checking process around your existing processes so you don't have to change your way of working.

Our unique plugin can also check the CTPS register for when you are performing telemarketing to companies.

If you're a SalesForce user, you can use the PhoneScreen product from our partners ProvenWorks.

TalkTalk has been reprimanded by regulator Ofcom and threatened with a fine of up to £2m for making silent calls earlier this year.

This is the sort of headline that the industry wants to avoid, however there are other aspects of telephone marketing that can prove costly to the marketer.

Making marketing calls to people who have signed up to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) can end in substantial fines, not to mention the damage it does to the brand. It is no excuse to say that the calls were made by a third party as the company should check that their agents are delivering a service within the law. Marketers can rest easy by screening the call list against those on TPS, this can be done online using our data cleansing service.

For SME’s who use the internet to produce a contact list, data8 have an application where if you hover the cursor over a telephone number it will immediately indicate if it is a callable number.

For companies that do not have a dialler they need to ensure that the telephone numbers they have are relevant to save their agents dialling numbers that are not obtainable.  Again this can be done by using a telephone validation service. Ensuring the line is valid will guarantee an uplift in productivity as the numbers will be correct.

Finally there is telephone number appending where a confirmed number can be added to a mailing list so contact can be made via the phone.

Using these services allows companies to stay within the law and increase their productivity.

Now that the News of the World has been closed, it has been suggested that it is now open season for celebs in the sleaze department, free now to indulge in extra marital affairs without the fear of having their phones hacked!  The fear of getting caught out isn’t always a deterrent and maybe adds to the excitement! 

When it comes to your data we can help to insure that you do not get caught out mailing or calling unresponsive individuals who have registered on the Telephone Preference Service or the Mailing Preference Service.  Penalties are in place for those who do not abide by the rules, and these aren’t as exciting! 

We can also remove goneaways and deceased records from your file, avoiding wasted mailings/telephone calls and upsetting the relatives of deceased individuals.  You can register online to receive a Free of Charge health check on your data, our Data Quality Audit.

Please contact one of our sales team who will be pleased to help to ensure you don't become a news item.

If you purchase some data from us that contains a telephone number column, you may find that it doesn't display correctly in Excel. For example, our phone number 0151 355 4555 may show as 1513554555 or even 1.51E+09. Not very helpful.

This is because Excel is treating the field as a number rather than text. The file will actually contain the correct number, e.g. "01513554555", but when Excel opens the file it decides to display it in the same way it displays other numeric fields.

If you encounter this problem, you can avoid it by using the following steps:

Rename the file

When the filename has a ".csv" extension, Excel will always convert telephone numbers to numeric values and display them in the formats shown above. The first thing to do then is to rename the file to give it a ".txt" extension instead.

Open the file

In Excel, click File > Open and select the .txt file. Click Open and the Text Import Wizard will open.

Choose Delimited file type

On the first screen of this wizard, select the Delimited data type option and click Next.

 Choose Comma Delimited

On the second screen of the wizard, select the Comma delimiter option. Ensure that all the other delimiter options are unticked, as is the "Treat consecutive delimiters as one" option. The "Text qualifier" option should be left as a double-quote.

 Treat the telephone number column as text

Select the telephone number column, then click the Text data type option. Repeat this for any additional telephone number columns you have. Click Finish and your file will be opened correctly.