With People on the Move, Data Hygiene is Increasingly Critical for Casino Operators

Database decay is at an all-time high!

We all know the struggles of keeping your database in tip-top shape. Updating addresses, emails, phone numbers, and other pertinent information can be a daunting task—especially when most of the work is being done manually.

Every year, 36 million Americans change their physical address and 40% change their email address. Every two years, 45% change their phone number. Essentially all casinos (99.9%) rely on direct mail as their main source of B2C communications. Email comes in a close second, along with text messaging and mobile apps. That means you’re more than likely wasting dollars and opportunities on marketing to someone who isn’t home (and never will be).

The fact is that in today’s world, maintaining a clean database manually is no longer sustainable for your business. There is simply too much data to keep up with. In fact, the decay rate for a database is about 30% annually. Think about that in relation to the size of your database: If your active database is 100,000 records, that means roughly 30,000 records in your database are inaccurate after one year!

In addition to data decay, casinos have historically had the huge challenge of filling in the missing fields, like gender, marital status, and other vital information that can provide valuable insights when it comes to understanding your guests. By cleansing your database on a regular basis, you will gain a wealth of knowledge about your guests that has only been assumed up until now.

So how do you tackle this monster without taxing your staff or utilizing multiple data sources to get accurate information about your customers? The answer is big data! We’ve all heard about this from television shows and movies telling us how corporations spy on you. But in reality, big data is one of the most underutilized tools today to help manage your database and marketing.

By cleansing (or appending) your database you can easily get basic data points corrected (address, email, phone #), PLUS, you can take a much deeper dive into your guests’ behaviors and info. Imagine how much more effective your marketing team could be if you had info such as HHI, Gender, Ethnicity, Veteran Status, Marital Status, Vehicle Make & Model and Education.

What if you knew the most popular car that your guests drive? Could that help when selecting a vehicle to give away? How about knowing if someone is a Veteran? These key points could help you segment your database even further, creating efficient and targeted campaigns.

The fact that 32% of marketing professionals plan to invest in segmentation and targeting solutions should be the signal that you should be putting some time and effort in keeping your database pristine. This will help save you money in the long run and reduce direct mail and digital advertising waste.

So, the question that begs to be answered is: How often are you cleansing your database? Not just emails and addresses; rather, your entire database. We recommend cleansing your database once a quarter to ensure your advertising dollars are well spent. This will ensure reduced waste for your direct mail and better digital targeting for your online efforts. But this practice is not free: make sure you budget accordingly when the time comes.