A couple of days ago, I got an email from MelissaData.com. Although I’ve never done any business with them, my impressions of them have always been quite good. In fact, I make reference to them in a blog I wrote last fall about How to Develop a Best Customer Profile.

The contents of the email very much confirmed my positive impression as it provided some very good information plus some self promotion (which I don’t mind as long as its balanced with helpful info).

So what do they do?

• Their words: Melissa Data’s data quality tools provide U.S. and global address verification, change of address updates, and fuzzy matching deduplication capabilities.
• My words: You can license a list of businesses or consumers for direct marketing purposes with confidence that it will be an up to date and well maintained list. Or you can use you own list and MelissaData will work their magic to cleanse and update your info so you’re not blowing cash on undeliverable marketing.

In the email that I got, they managed to cover the following important topics that every marketer should be aware of:

Keeping your database clean and updated will pave the way for optimal ROI. Here’s a list of the top five ways to achieve data quality.

List Hygiene: Your Smartest Move. A global list hygiene strategy is part and parcel of increasing relevance for the consumer, reducing costs for the marketer, and demonstrating corporate responsibility.

A Resource Center that provides you links to white papers, case studies, industry news, and insightful articles on data quality, direct marketing and direct mail.

Lastly,

An offer for 10% off of every mailing list they have until March 31st.

To me, that a very nice balance of information and promotion.

I stop short of a full endorsement of MelissaData because I’ve never actually used them. But with my data background (courtesy of 10 years at Dun & Bradstreet) I can certainly endorse checking them out.

Thanks for reading my blog and please visit again.

Vincent out.