REaD UK Products Move With The Times

Amidst all the chaos and changes facing the DM world at the moment, it’s easy to get bogged down by the more apocalyptic issues such as looming legislation and the proposed removal of the Edited Electoral Register, but pull back just a little and it’s the creeping social changes that have the greatest impact on the way we do business.

One area in the direct marketing food chain where social changes can be seen to have the most noticeable impact is in data suppression. If a suppression product is worth its salt it should pick up on and reflect subtle changes in the housing market or family dynamics rather being based on a set of potentially inaccurate assumptions.

Take for example the subtle shift in our social mores. Forty percent of marriages now end in divorce and cohabiting is now de rigueur, no longer the transgression it once was. We’ve also seen enormous changes in the housing market in the last 10 years. Mortgages are thin on the ground, buy-to-let has bottomed out and as first time buyers struggle to find their feet amidst the uncertainty, many have been forced into rental or even back into the parental home. The student population is also on the increase with undergraduate applications reaching record levels for the fourth year running. Subsequently, short term student accommodation is in high demand making it an investment hot spot for canny developers.

Previously, the highly transient rental sector was much harder for suppression products to accurately track than owner-occupiers. Now, with even the most credit-worthy individuals struggling to become homeowners in the current economy, it is more important than ever that suppression solutions capture moves across the board. For marketers engaging in DM activities these sociological nuggets are gold and it’s essential that we move with the times.

Still Streets Ahead
Here at REaD UK we aim to ensure that our products and services track and reflect the changing times, offering innovative solutions to our clients. A perfect example of this can be seen in the changes we’ve made to The Gone Away Suppression File (GAS), which has seen an overall increase in the number of monthly uploads.

GAS is built purely for suppression purposes making it the most accurate and trustworthy gone away suppression file on the market. In order to maintain our position as the best in the market we have incorporated a number of new information sources, giving us greater cross-referencing resources and enabling us to identify a greater degree of home moves whilst maintaining the quality of the data.

With the increase in splintered individual moves from households, REaD UK recognises the importance of delivering a solution that reflects these changes. Further to this, we receive information from a variety of transactional, local authority and other third party sources, which accounts for a significant uplift volume in GAS. Each record is then passed through REaD UK’s stringent build and validation process before being uploaded to GAS. It’s our unique process that differentiates GAS from its competitors - it’s what we keep off the file that really counts!

Luci Penn, Managing Director of REaD UK comments, “In order to ensure the accuracy and integrity of our Gone Away Suppression (GAS) file it’s essential that we respond to social and market trends such as the increase in split household moves and the demand for short term rental accommodation. Because of these subtle market shifts we capture more datasets overall but in order to ensure the success of our client’s campaigns it’s essential that we remain diligent when it comes to our validation process.”