Direct marketing remains one of the most effective strategies for some types of products and businesses. If you are one of those who uses direct mail to get the word out about your business, Chief Marketer has a great list of 10 things you need to consider in order to prepare your direct marketing data. Given the costs involve of running a direct mail campaign, you’d want to make sure that the first step — your data — is clean and accurate.

The 10 steps you need to do are:

1. Properly integrate all your data
2. Validate your data and check for consistency/accuracy
3. Validate distribution parameters
4. Validate relationships (if you’re sending to a list of “cancelled customers” check that your data actually contains a list of existing customers
5. Standardize your contact information (e.g. have a consistent way of saying “Avenue”)
6. Check for duplicate records
7. Run National Change of Address
8. Check the validity of the addresses
9. Browse and spot check your data
10. Go with your gut: check for data that you think isn’t right.

You can read the full article from Chief Marketer