The Complete Guide to Data Appending Solutions

Data quality is the lifeblood of all organizations. Quality data provided with data enrichment services can empower you to market more confidently, create a better-personalized experience, and improve profitability. 

Despite how crucial data is to every organization, companies suffer from incomplete, inaccurate, inappropriate, duplicated, or missing information in their database due to human error, system errors, and life-changing events. 

Insufficient data can cost you more than sales. It can heavily impact the relationship between you and your customers.

• According to IBM, “Bad data costs U.S. companies three trillion dollars per year.”
• According to Kissmetrics, “Businesses lose as much as 20% of revenue due to poor data quality.” 
• Cio.com states that 77% of companies believe they lost, on average, 12% of revenue due to poor data.

The stats above show a common pattern of losses because of poor data quality. Improving data quality is paramount to growing your business. To safely scale your business, avoid purchasing lists, and instead seek out a data append service.

Marketers have been uneasy about data enrichment

Some marketers love them.  These marketers know that data enrichment services are a quick way to increase your knowledge about the people in your database. Done well, appends help you become more relevant to your prospects and customers. These marketers understand that you can append all sorts of information to your house file. A data append is not just about adding email addresses to your file.

Other marketers don’t have a positive view of appends, usually because they worked with a provider that relied heavily on modeled data or because they’re under the misconception that they’re purchasing a list.

Appending data is about enhancing your existing list of individuals who have consented to communicate with you. Email appends, specifically, involve ensuring that the email you have on file for that already opted-in individual is their most up-to-date address and that it’s still safe to send to.

While data modeling has improved over time, marketers have told us they still feel uncertain about basing important marketing campaign execution decisions on models that piece together several disparate data points. Choosing a data provider partner that pulls data from 100% self-reported, individually-linked, and trusted sources is crucial. You should also ask providers what they do to ensure the cleanliness of their data. 

We recently published a special report, ‘The State of Appends,’ to expand the discussion around appends in the email industry.  In this report, we’ve shared the type of data that Webbula customers are appending to their databases, as well as the use cases, to give you some ideas about how a high-quality append could help your business and your bottom line.

1. Build a High-Quality Database

Harnessing the power of data enrichment services will empower you to build a high-quality database primed and ready for account-based marketing campaigns. For example, your signup form only asks for a name and email address. With an append service, you can fill in data gaps such as postal address and phone number. 

You’ll also maintain your email list health by ensuring you have the current, most up-to-date email address for your prospect and customer lists.

2. Campaign Confidently

Email, call, and execute ABM with confidence. With data appends, you’ll know you’re reaching the right inboxes, smartphones, and mailboxes.

3. Target More Specific Audiences

A data append service will empower you to reach more specific segments of your target audience. With appends, you will be able to determine important information about your contacts, such as gender, age, income, and credit rating. 

You can target prospects or existing customers based not only on your own first-party data, but also on the generation they belong to, as well as any gender-based interests and more.

4. Increase Profitability 

Data append opens up opportunities for new marketing channels. With access to previously unknown data points, such as phone numbers or postal addresses, you can conduct SMS, telemarketing, and direct mailer campaigns. 

Increased channel access means increased opportunities for revenue generation.

1. Forward Data Append

Forward Append means that you already have a name or address on file for an individual and you are seeking more information such as a phone number, email, demographics, property data, or vehicle information.

Forward appending is considered the most common type of data enrichment service because companies usually have a name, but need to fill in the missing information.

2. Reverse Email Append

Reverse Append is when you obtain one field of data and use it to return all other data that can be tied to it. Let’s say, for example, a business wants to send out a marketing campaign but wants to personalize it. They have a list of valid, consenting, and/or GDPR compliant email addresses, but no full names. What can they do? They can reverse email append their data using the email addresses, and receive the names, and any other information they may need to make the email campaign more personalized, such as demographics or interests.

Reverse appending is open for almost any dataset, from names to email addresses or phone numbers. Reverse appending match rates are not as good as forward appending. Forward appending is known to be more accurate and the process takes less time than the reverse appends.

3. Fractional Append

Fractional Append is a mix between both forward and reverse appends. For example, if you have a name and an email, you can get a postal address. This can be extremely useful for reaching out to your customers with a direct mail campaign.

4. Email Appending

Email Appending is a popular subtype of a forward append where the customer’s data contains a full set of personal identifying information (PII) and Webbula is to append email addresses. To utilize an email append, you must follow your local consent to communicate laws.

Step 3: Webbula runs your data through our Webbula dataVault

Once you’ve chosen how you’re going to upload your data it’s time to run your data, through our dataVault to determine what we can match with our self-reported data. You can make data selections accurately knowing they’re from deterministic and individually linked sources from over 83% of the U.S. consumer market.

Step 4: The complete list is returned back to you