by johnt
12. January 2011 15:11
Not such a silly question when you are data cleansing.
Sending marketing material to the recently deceased is one of the worst things a company can do, so making sure data is suppressed before mailing is important. Each record flagged as being deceased costs less than producing and sending a single item of mail, so the return on investment is immediate.
There are various files that are used to cleanse data of any deceased records, for example Mortascreen, TBR and disConnect deceased, each one has their own source of data. Therefore it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each file and understand how it will be used.
The data sources vary from the probate office to third party information which could be based upon a returned letter. A lack of understanding can lead to embarrassing situations, a charity recently did their own data cleansing and a donor had a direct debit cancelled by the charity as they thought they were dead, when they were very much alive. This led to a very embarrassing conversation between the donor and the charity.
The error was caused by not understanding the differences between the files and setting the appropriate criteria for the purpose of the cleansing.
To avoid this situation it is imporatnt to get the correct advice and avoid, to paraphrase Mark Twain, 'Rumours of my Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated'