Understanding Email Appending
by Cyril Kearney

What is Email Appending?

The process of adding data to a customer's name and address record is not new. We are all familiar with adding Zip+4 to customer addresses. Software does this for us in-house or we have it done by an outside service. Some companies use outside services to add telephone numbers to their database in support of their telemarketing efforts. Email appending adds or corrects a customer's email address to his existing contact information. Today, many companies use outside appending services to help them develop and manage their email appending efforts.

What Are the Upsides?

• Improved Customer Retention. Email is an excellent channel for enhancing communications and selling. Retaining customers is much less expensive than new customer acquisition.
• Enhanced Quality. The append process returns only email address of customers that are willing to receive offers from your company.
• Better Targeting. Combined with the sales history in your database, the postal demographic information can pinpoint individuals and groups for specific email offers.
• Faster Sales . Emails can be generated quickly. Response is fast with typically 90% of responses happening in the first 48 to 72 hours.

What Are the Potential Downsides?

• Spam Accusations . To avoid being accused of spamming, use email addresses from people that are willing to get advertising from you through the mail. To ensure that they want to get mail from your company, an email is sent giving the people a chance to say "no" by opting to be removed from your mailing list. These "no" email addresses are returned to your company so that it can take special steps to suppress future mailing to anyone that does not want to get email from your company. Your outside service for appending should keep a history of email addresses and document that customers did not "opt-out."
• List Exposure to Pilfering. Anytime your mailing list passes out of your hands, there is a chance that the mailing list will be misused. This is true for any list rental and every time your list goes to a printer. To reduce these risks, decoys should be added to your list to uncover the misuse. Dealing through well-known established business partners only makes good sense.

How Is It Done?

• Extract, Seed, and Transmit. Name and address records which need to have their email addresses appended are extracted from your company's database. Decoy records are added. This file is then transmit or delivered to your append service.
• Address Correction and Standardization. The append service will correct and standardize the addresses so that the records conform to its database standards. This improves match rate.
• Matching and Selecting Candidates. Name and addresses are matched against the database. Often more than one email address will be found for a name. Appending services have developed scoring techniques to determine the best possible match. A file of match candidates is developed.
• Suppression . Your append service should now reduce the match candidates' file by suppressing both the email addresses of people that have told your company not to email and the other "Do Not Mail" files such as the DMA Email Nixie file.
• Email Validation and the Customer's Opt-Out Opportunity. Work with your append service to create a permission letter which may offer an incentive. It should clearly state that your company is mailing to them because they are a current customer and you want to send offers by email in the future. Just as clearly, the email should tell them how to get removed from future mailings. It is very important not to obscure the removal process. Most append services will not participate unless they approve this letter.
• Updating Your Databases. The final step would be to update your database with the email address. If you have paid for pre-processing address standardization and correction, address information may be updated too.

What Should You Expect Appending To Cost?
Costs vary based upon the number of email addresses to be appended.

• Pre-processing Costs. You should anticipate some cost for address standardization and de-duping the list. They are roughly $2 or $3 a thousand US records for the entire list. For UK records, the cost may be $4 or $5. Most companies don't make this charge and bundle it into the overall charge for appending.

• Appending Costs. You only pay for successful email address appends. Customers asking to be opt-outs are considered successes, and your company is charged for them. These become future suppression records. There is no charge for undeliverable mail addresses. Catalog retailers of general merchandise to US customers typically pay between 15 cents and 35 cents for each email address appended depending on volume. Catalog retailers to UK customers pay 50 cents and 85 cents. Note: Some services charge higher append price and no pre-processing costs.

What Is the Timeframe?

Although some services can deliver quicker, the email append cycle takes three weeks to a month.

What Are the Alternatives to Email Appending?

There are definitely more cost-effective ways to acquire email addresses. Usually the alternatives are used in addition to an appending service. Some of the alternatives include:

• Data Collect. Email addresses are important assets. The sales and customer service staff should routinely collect them and be trained to tell people how they will be used, the benefit to the customer, and that the customer may remove himself at anytime.

• Require Site Registration. A customer-only section of your web site would require them to submit their email address to log on.

• Host an On-Line Giveaway or Sweepstake. Customers with only postal addresses can be have mail sent to them offering an incentive. Part of this process would include supplying their email address.

• Start an Email Newsletter. A newsletter is a great way to develop continuing contact with your customers. To be successful, the newsletter must offer something of benefit so that your customers want to subscribe.

Can You Make Money on the Backend?

Businesses that rent their hot list may find new opportunities to rent their email addresses. You should be sure that the customer understands that he will be getting third-party offers.

Cyril Kearney (202-288-7171) is the Director of Marketing for DataMasters, Inc., which was founded in 1986 to provide quality data processing services and information products to clients that promote their services through mail or email.