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| October, 2003 | The
Monthly Newspaper of the NYSSCPA |
Vol.
6, No. 10 |
Why Did I Get That Piece of Mail?
By Peggy Urso, Marketing Manager
Your mailing list is only as good as the data in your database.” Have you heard that one before? Or how about “Garbage in, garbage out”? These are all watchwords that direct marketers live by. And when we do direct marketing here at the New York State Society of CPAs or the Foundation for Accounting Education, those watchwords ring true.
The Marketing Department sends most of its mailings to people with addresses in the NYSSCPA database. This sophisticated database houses a great deal of information about members and about nonmembers who have taken CPE through FAE. Most importantly for Marketing, it houses the interest codes that members checked off on their Update Forms. The Membership Department and the chapters use them for statewide committee, CPE and social program marketing, as well as statewide and chapter committee recruitment. They also are used for critical regulatory or legislative bulletins and alerts.
In the past, present members have received these Update Forms in the mail in the fall of each year. New members receive them when they join the NYSSCPA. When we ask you to check off interest codes, we expect that you are checking off those that represent the specialty areas of your firm or company and the areas of accounting you have a strong enough interest in to attend FAE seminars and conferences and other activities focused on them. Of course, over the years, those interest areas may change, and that’s why you’re always encouraged to update your information, either via the web or with a Membership Customer Service representative at 800-633-6310.
When marketing pulls the mailing list off of the NYSSCPA database, it pulls that list based on the following:
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Interest codes appropriate to the event
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Job titles in public accounting and in industry
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Geographical location based on chapters.
As you can see, if any of these pieces of information is incorrect on your file, you stand a good chance of getting mail not suited to you and not getting mail that is suited to you. Mail can also get returned to us because of an incomplete address or because the person or company has moved and has not updated the address.
Conferences are also promoted via ads in internal publications like The CPA Journal and The Trusted Professional, through outside mailing lists or in outside specialty magazines and websites such as Crain’s New York Business (www.crainsny.com).
But when you analyze the responses to mailings, the majority comes from the in-house NYSSCPA database. If the data you provide is current, our promotions can be tightly targeted so that you receive only the information that is relevant to you. In addition, more streamlined mailings can help us save mailing and postage costs that we can then direct to other Society services.
Make sure your records truly reflect your specific interests in the profession. Give us the data for a good mailing list. Then marketing can mine data that’s gold.
