Print-Plus: Keeping Your House in Order

Housefile Maintenance Checklist

• Key data accurately. Don't cut corners when it comes to data entry. If the data isn't accurate on the front end, everything else you do from a marketing standpoint will be adversely affected.
• Capture source code, date of last purchase, dollars spent and items purchased (or product category, if applicable) in your database.
• Capture phone numbers, fax numbers (especially for B-to-B retailers) and email addresses.
• Periodically update your housefile by running it through CASS-certified software to apply changes from the U.S. Postal Service. Also, periodically perform NCOA processing or use some alternative method of identifying address changes.

If you use customer account numbers, implement a relatively fail-safe method of assigning new numbers to ensure two things: one, no duplicate numbers are assigned and, two, no customer is assigned more than one number.