Tips on maintaining your database

A clean and up-to-date database is very important for a good email campaign. It's important to know who to approach and how. When you are personalizing your email campaigns it's important to know that your data is accurate. This is also important for a good deliverability and a good sender reputation.

Maintenance tips

  1. Keep all data in one central file or program. This prevents you from searching for it and having to update multiple files. With the REST API it's also possible to download the data that Copernica gathers to your own server.
  2. Provide insight into your data by using clear descriptive names, tabs and definitions of data. Selections enable you to view one database in multiple ways, for example by target group, completed campaigns or relation types.
  3. Keep your database complete by adding new information directly. Make all employees add data directly instead of saving it elsewhere. You can add all contacts of the organization in one file for example, to make sure everyone has access to everything.
  4. Keep your database up-to-date. Handle unsubscribes, bounces and mutations when they occur. It's most effective to clean your database after each mailing. Permanent errors are bad for your reputation and corrupt your database and may cause you to be blocked by clients' spam filters. It also makes your results less accurate. For an example of bounce handling you can consult this article.
  5. Allow your profiles access to their own data with an edit form or a URL. This way they can contribute their own data and help you keep your database up-to-date.
  6. Enrich existing profiles with results of previous campaigns. Good marketing software will save this information automatically, so don't forget to use it!
  7. Check your permissions for sending email to a profile to prevent spam markings. Create an opt-in to make sure your profiles want to receive your mail.
  8. Use your database to keep relations. Out of sight, out of mind. Keep your customers attention by sending them a nice email on their birthday or to remind them of maintenance for their products.

If your data is well-organized and insightful your marketing team will have more opportunities in approaching your customers. Good data allows for personalizing for target groups and much more.

More information

We hope our tips helped you out! In the articles below we give you some more tips and information about databases and selections.