"Price Per Piece Doesn't Matter Near As Much As Other Things"
"Price Per Piece Doesn't Matter Near As Much As Other Things"
Team Velocity (Ifle) has the most significant filtering and de-duplication software and processes in the industry. That's why our overall costs (the actual bill) is typically 20% less than all major companies. The key to truly reducing costs is "cutting" out the fat from your mailing lists. The price per piece is one factor, but reducing waste is the most relevant cost factor in targeted marketing today. Most "mail" companies don't get that, and they accept waste as an inherent problem, that is then justified with lowering their price per piece. It sounds good, but the math just doesn't work.
Would a client rather spend $18,000 and market to 20,000 clean households (at .90) that have been thoroughly filtered through Ifle, or spend $19,750 and market to 25,000 (at .79) that have not been filtered accept for a basic NCOA and dedupe? We believe the client would rather save the $1,750 and get a much better ROI. Some dealers really believe they are saving 11 cents, but don't realize that other companies constantly "jack up" the number of households to more than make up for the difference.
In our experience, this is the way other companies "pencil" deals and actually let their salespeople dictate the size of the DMS lists. They drastically overcharge dealerships in waste, but keep their price per piece low to mask their inefficiencies. Most dealers are naive and fall for the gimmick. At Team Velocity, only our data team is allowed to determine the size of the DMS, because salespeople are paid based on volume and money. Team Velocity created Ifle and employs an entire data department. We don't accept 25%-50% waste, nor should our customers!
Team V has done its homework. Most companies offer two or three very basic quarterly filters on your data. That way they can claim they cleaned it and "took out" all the bad names. You don't need any special software for this - it's basically free. Typically, the cleaning is performed quarterly.
Their filters:
1) 12 or 24 month NCOA - looks for people who have moved in the last 12/24 months and updates their latest address. Cost for this license fee is only about $3k per year.
2) De-dupes out households with the exact same address.
3) Remove businesses by looking for records with the "first name" blank. In the car business, leaving the first name blank is the universal method for identifying a business.
Team V Waste Filters (with Ifle):
[Some of these processes are done daily, or weekly depending on the client. They are all performed automatically with Ifle.]
1) 48 month NCOA - the longest available, and since we download 5 years worth of data - we want to go as far back as possible. Cost for this license is $100k per year.
2) Dedupe households at the address level.
3) De-dupe at the name level.
4) De-dupe at the vin # level.
5) Remove businesses by looking for records with the "first name" blank.
6) Removing businesses based on keywords (auto, llc, Inc, Toyota, etc.), because an extremely common mistake is to put data in the first name field for businesses. We have 132 common keywords that we filter for...just to reduce waste.
7) Current Owner Filter - we use our own - VIN tracking technology to try and determine the current owner of every vin # in your entire database. This is a massive filter and usually picks up thousands of wasted households by getting rid of previous owners, wholesalers, etc.
8) Daily Trade-In Filter - we download the trade-ins everyday and cross reference them against the entire client database to see if we can eliminate households from future mailings.
9) Geo-Code Distance Filter - we Geo-Code every single household in a client's database, and automatically eliminate any outside the statistical probability for the campaign. For example, if we are doing a service campaign - Ifle restricts targeting households based on the statistical probability of a customer responding based on distance and historical activity level.
10) Do Not Contact Filter - we maintain the client DNC lists and automatically scrub it against all mail campaigns.
11) Undeliverable Mail - returned mail is processed in our Bad Mail Department, and automatically updated in Ifle to be eliminated from future campaigns. This alone saves the client significant dollars per year.
Team V is very proud of our exhaustive efforts and passion to reduce the client's waste, lower their overall bill and provide them with an excellent value. Any perceived increase in our price per household is more than offset by our ability to "cut" the fat and maintain an ever growing undeliverable bad mail file for every client.
In simple terms, we don't want our customers to fall for the gimmick of "price per piece" without at least a detailed explanation of every other company's desire, ability and processes to determine the lowest and most logical households to target for each campaign. If there is anybody out there with 11 daily waste filters and Ifle, which is designed with one purpose of reducing the "fat", we haven't run into them yet!
Go Team V!
Team Velocity (Ifle) has the most significant filtering and de-duplication software and processes in the industry. That's why our overall costs (the actual bill) is typically 20% less than all major companies. The key to truly reducing costs is "cutting" out the fat from your mailing lists. The price per piece is one factor, but reducing waste is the most relevant cost factor in targeted marketing today. Most "mail" companies don't get that, and they accept waste as an inherent problem, that is then justified with lowering their price per piece. It sounds good, but the math just doesn't work.
Would a client rather spend $18,000 and market to 20,000 clean households (at .90) that have been thoroughly filtered through Ifle, or spend $19,750 and market to 25,000 (at .79) that have not been filtered accept for a basic NCOA and dedupe? We believe the client would rather save the $1,750 and get a much better ROI. Some dealers really believe they are saving 11 cents, but don't realize that other companies constantly "jack up" the number of households to more than make up for the difference.
In our experience, this is the way other companies "pencil" deals and actually let their salespeople dictate the size of the DMS lists. They drastically overcharge dealerships in waste, but keep their price per piece low to mask their inefficiencies. Most dealers are naive and fall for the gimmick. At Team Velocity, only our data team is allowed to determine the size of the DMS, because salespeople are paid based on volume and money. Team Velocity created Ifle and employs an entire data department. We don't accept 25%-50% waste, nor should our customers!
Team V has done its homework. Most companies offer two or three very basic quarterly filters on your data. That way they can claim they cleaned it and "took out" all the bad names. You don't need any special software for this - it's basically free. Typically, the cleaning is performed quarterly.
Their filters:
1) 12 or 24 month NCOA - looks for people who have moved in the last 12/24 months and updates their latest address. Cost for this license fee is only about $3k per year.
2) De-dupes out households with the exact same address.
3) Remove businesses by looking for records with the "first name" blank. In the car business, leaving the first name blank is the universal method for identifying a business.
Team V Waste Filters (with Ifle):
[Some of these processes are done daily, or weekly depending on the client. They are all performed automatically with Ifle.]
1) 48 month NCOA - the longest available, and since we download 5 years worth of data - we want to go as far back as possible. Cost for this license is $100k per year.
2) Dedupe households at the address level.
3) De-dupe at the name level.
4) De-dupe at the vin # level.
5) Remove businesses by looking for records with the "first name" blank.
6) Removing businesses based on keywords (auto, llc, Inc, Toyota, etc.), because an extremely common mistake is to put data in the first name field for businesses. We have 132 common keywords that we filter for...just to reduce waste.
7) Current Owner Filter - we use our own - VIN tracking technology to try and determine the current owner of every vin # in your entire database. This is a massive filter and usually picks up thousands of wasted households by getting rid of previous owners, wholesalers, etc.
8) Daily Trade-In Filter - we download the trade-ins everyday and cross reference them against the entire client database to see if we can eliminate households from future mailings.
9) Geo-Code Distance Filter - we Geo-Code every single household in a client's database, and automatically eliminate any outside the statistical probability for the campaign. For example, if we are doing a service campaign - Ifle restricts targeting households based on the statistical probability of a customer responding based on distance and historical activity level.
10) Do Not Contact Filter - we maintain the client DNC lists and automatically scrub it against all mail campaigns.
11) Undeliverable Mail - returned mail is processed in our Bad Mail Department, and automatically updated in Ifle to be eliminated from future campaigns. This alone saves the client significant dollars per year.
Team V is very proud of our exhaustive efforts and passion to reduce the client's waste, lower their overall bill and provide them with an excellent value. Any perceived increase in our price per household is more than offset by our ability to "cut" the fat and maintain an ever growing undeliverable bad mail file for every client.
In simple terms, we don't want our customers to fall for the gimmick of "price per piece" without at least a detailed explanation of every other company's desire, ability and processes to determine the lowest and most logical households to target for each campaign. If there is anybody out there with 11 daily waste filters and Ifle, which is designed with one purpose of reducing the "fat", we haven't run into them yet!
Go Team V!
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