This week Webbula published our latest special report, ‘The State of Appends,’ to expand the discussion around appends in the email industry. This report is based on non-email appends, the information you can add to your database in addition to email. (If you haven’t already read the report, you can download it here).
I know marketers have a mixed relationship with appends. Some still have a negative opinion, while others love it and understand that the solution is a fast way to increase knowledge about the people in your database.
As a result of COVID-19, many have altered their opinions about the solution because of the impact to data quality due to layoffs, job changes, relocations, and much more.
Marketers needed a way to improve their data quality fast while keeping up with customers during this unpredictable time.
In this report, we touch on different append types such as Email, Income, Postal Addresses, and Gender, but in this article, I want to dig deeper into why Webbula saw an uptick in Phone Appends during the first half of 2020.
Rise in Phone Append Services due to COVID-19
In the first half of 2020, a little over half of our non-email append volume was matching phone numbers to customer’s house files. The volume increased dramatically in May and again in June.
Why do we think there was a rise in volume? Each year we see demand for phone number appends increase; we credit this to a few long-term trends:
- Consumers giving up their land-line telephone numbers, requiring marketers to seek out mobile numbers to reach customers
- Increased interest in marketing with text messages, which almost always delivers higher engagement rates than other channels and can generate a higher ROI.
But this year, the huge uptick in Phone appends happened because companies lost the face-to-face engagement due to stay-at-home orders and also as a way to cut through online advertisements and to create a connection that COVID-19 disrupted.
As a result of the pandemic, more and more people are continuing to work from home, which means more time to pick up your Phone, and the curiosity of who’s calling increases with working remotely.
2 Industries that relied on Phone Appends in Early 2020
Real Estate: The real estate industry needed to keep pace with the people who lost their jobs and were looking to downsize, relocate, or people interested in refinancing, new home buyers, etc.
A phone append service not only allowed the industry to communicate on a quicker level with homeowners and renters, but phone numbers also act as a unique identifier.
If all you have for a contact is their phone number, you can utilize that to expand upon and gain deeper insights into your customers, such as adding a name, postal, email, financials, or even their interests like reading habits.
Since the spread of COVID, people’s lives have been heavily impacted. People changed jobs, and moved across state lines, but what often doesn’t change during these life events is their mobile phone number.
Not only in real estate, but other industries can use phone numbers as a unique identifier to track their customers’ life-changing events, and never have to lose touch.
Food Industry: It’s evident that the COVID-10 pandemic has forced restaurants to either close their doors temporarily, limit foot traffic, and offer home delivery.
That puts a divot into any company that markets primarily to restaurants. Before COVID-19, sales reps went door to door, but now they rely heavily on email and Phone.
Conclusion
Reliable data has never been more crucial. That is why we released this special report, ‘The State of Appends,’ to expand the discussion around appends in the email industry and share how Webbula customers are appending non-email appends to their databases to help your business.
We hope to give you ideas about how a high-quality append could help your business bounce back from these times.