Cleansing your mailing lists on a regular basis makes good business sense. Not only you don’t waste time and money on mailings that never reach their intended audience, but misdirected mail hurts the total outcome of your mail campaign. Data hygiene is equally important for email marketing. While it might seem less consequential from a cost standpoint, using lists with invalid email addresses or those that haven’t been properly cleansed from an authenticated standpoint ensures nothing but trouble. Consider these ways to make your data sparkle:

Keep contact information up-to-date: You’re sure to lose time and money if your marketing messages are being delivered to the wrong targets. Regular list cleansing — before each campaign — will ensure your marketing is directed to the right demographics in the right place at the right time.

Make sure data is properly formatted: Mistakes do happen and sometimes an innocent keyboarding error can throw off hundreds of addresses. Is the “dot-com” missing from email addresses? Or the individual’s name transposed in the mailing address? Proper formatting facilitates a truly personalized direct marketing experience while diminishing the probability of improperly addressed emails or postal mailings being discarded.

Augment, refine, append: There’s considerable equity in an existing list but if it’s not up-to-date or lacking critical information such as an email address, its value is significantly reduced. Rely on a trusted provider that can add permission-based addresses or phone numbers to current customer and prospect lists.

Your data is your most valuable sales and marketing asset. Being “mail ready” — whether email or postal mail — means your lists will create results instead of waste.