The Importance of Data Hygiene in Campaigns: Keeping Your Lists Clean and Effective
In the world of political campaigns, having accurate and clean data is essential. Whether you’re running a small, local campaign or managing data at the national level, poor data hygiene can result in wasted resources, missed opportunities, and compliance issues. Greg Andreycak, Director of Account Services for CMDI, shared his insights into best practices for data management and how campaigns can maintain clean, effective data.
The #1 Data Hygiene Mistake: Not Running NCOA Updates
One of the biggest mistakes campaigns make is failing to update their data using the National Change of Address (NCOA) system. This process, which should be conducted at least quarterly, ensures that your mailing list remains updated, reducing waste and improving efficiency. Keeping data current helps campaigns save on postage costs and ensures outreach reaches the right audience.
Standardizing Data Entry for Better Management
With multiple points of data entry, whether from online forms, in-person sign-ups, or manual data entry, it’s critical to establish a standardized approach to data formatting. Ensuring consistency in how addresses, names, and other key data points are entered reduces errors and makes future mailings and outreach efforts more efficient.
Some best practices for standardization include:
Setting clear guidelines for abbreviations (e.g., “Road” vs. “Rd.”)
Standardizing apartment number formats (e.g., “Apt. 2” vs. “#2”)
Ensuring uniformity in name inputs (e.g., avoiding discrepancies between “Robert” and “Bob”)
The Importance of De-Duplication
Duplicate records are inevitable in any campaign and actively managing them is crucial. Running periodic de-duplication processes ensures that multiple entries for the same person are merged correctly, preventing waste and reducing the risk of compliance issues. However, de-duplication must be handled carefully. Automated processes must be customized to avoid merging records incorrectly, such as treating “Robert” and “Bob” at the same address as different individuals.
List Appends: Enhancing Your Data
Another valuable tool for campaigns is list appending—adding missing information such as email addresses or phone numbers to an existing mailing list. There are specialized services that can help campaigns enrich their databases with additional contact information, enabling more comprehensive and effective outreach efforts.
The Role of Seeding in Protecting Data Integrity
Campaigns should also consider seeding their lists, which involves inserting decoy names and addresses into a mailing list. This helps monitor mail delivery, ensuring that outreach materials are being sent as expected, and protects against unauthorized use of a campaign’s data. If a seeded name receives an unexpected mailing, it could indicate that the list has been improperly accessed or used.
AI and Machine Learning: Smarter Tools for Data Maintenance
As technology continues to evolve, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining clean and effective campaign data. These tools can help identify anomalies in datasets, automate de-duplication with greater accuracy, and even predict data decay before it happens.
AI-powered systems can:
Flag potential duplicate entries by recognizing name variations, typos, and address similarities
Suggest standardized formatting for new data entries in real time
Automatically run NCOA checks and other validation tasks on a rolling basis
Predict when contact information is likely to become outdated, prompting proactive updates
By integrating AI and ML into your data hygiene strategy, campaigns can reduce the manual burden on staff while improving the precision and timeliness of their outreach efforts. These technologies can scale easily with the campaign’s growth, making them especially valuable during high-volume periods or in larger races.
Scaling Up: Challenges of Handling High-Volume Campaign Data
For smaller campaigns, managing a limited dataset might seem straightforward, but scaling up to a large congressional, gubernatorial, or presidential campaign introduces new challenges. High-volume campaigns require robust systems for processing incoming donations, managing multiple mailing lists, and handling compliance with USPS requirements. As volume increases, campaigns may need to open multiple PO boxes, establish Business Reply Mail (BRM) accounts, and work with specialized data management firms.
Final Thoughts: Building a Strong Data Infrastructure
For any campaign, maintaining clean, standardized, and regularly updated data is a crucial component of success. By implementing best practices in data hygiene, including NCOA updates, de-duplication, list appends, and now AI-powered tools, campaigns can maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure their outreach efforts are as effective as possible.
The goal is to keep data accurate and actionable so that when it’s time to launch an email or direct mail campaign, everything is ready to go without unnecessary delays. Investing in strong data hygiene practices today will pay dividends in the long run, ensuring a well-run and effective campaign.