Fight Global Warming with Data Quality – Part 2

In Fight Global Warming With Data Quality we showed how increased focus on Data Quality could help the environment, especially in the Direct Mail industry.

TNT Post has taken the lead in this field and introduces the “eco-mark” for the brands using their services. Data Quality is one of the key factors to obtain the “eco-mark”

Data cleansing has been flagged as one of the best ways a business can improve its marketing efficiency and score well on TNT’s carbon calculator, as well as save money in both the short and long term.

You can read more about the initiative on MarketScan

Fight Global Warming with Data Quality

The Direct Mail industry is urged to go green.  Experian is referring to surveys that show if Direct Mail companies wants to reduce their waste and be more cost-efficient, they have to make better use of Data Quality Systems. This will ensure their records are as accurate as possible.

I haven’t found this survey myself, and cannot link to it.

But I believe the survey.  Let’s do the math with an imagined example:

A telephone company sends out 1.000.000 letters in a DM campaign.
They have 5% duplicates/bad records which is 50.000 wasted letters
Each letter weigh 20 grams, so the waste is 1.000 kg of paper
This equals to 24 trees. They do 10 campaigns a year, and waste 240 trees.

What would the economic incentive be for this company to save 240 trees?
50.000 wasted letter ten times a year at a cost of 80 cents?  400.000 Euros in direct costs. In addition you avoid soft costs like lower customer attrition, employee satisfaction, error rework and the list goes on.  Not so bad in these hardening economic times?