Melissa Data Quality Reviews

We use this tool for B2B and B2C customer de-duplication/matching, generating a golden version of our customers and for householding. 

We use Melissa Data Matchup for SSIS to de-duplicate our customer data on a daily basis so that we were able to reduce marketing costs and increase the quality of communication with customers.

It replaced a weekly primitive custom de-duplication (record level) matching process.

Its survivor-ship logic handles very complex column-level rules efficiently providing us with a first-time for a single version of truth for our customer data. It's inherent intelligence into name and address parsing provides a very accurate exact match with no false positives and no unexpected false negatives. We are continually impressed by its sophistication and ease of use. The tool does not requires a middle tier or specialized staff like every other tool on the market.

We have a large volume of customers (millions) and this suite is the best priced for what we need.

We use the cloud version for NCOA and the on-premise version for the normal batch processing from our POS systems. The two components we use are the Contact Verify and MatchUp components.

Contact Verify: Ability to cleanse the name, phone, & address information. The codes that accompany the output record helps our system determine whose address is accurate and if not, what are the issues with the address. This software assists in more complete analysis of our customers.

MatchUp: Ability to "DeDupe" and retrieve possible customer matches which keeps our customer master clean and accurate.

Before we used DQSand an algorithm for matching and only updated valid address information quarterly. This caused returned mailing and upset customers. This suite has monthly updates to ensure we are up to date with recent new home construction and gives us the ability to modify the matching rules to our needs. We have seen a reduction of calls and returned mail.

I was referring to two different components: Contact Verify and MatchUp.
Contact Verify: Our company runs campaigns for our membership and needs accurate address information. We previously "cleansed" and matched the incoming customer addresses but did not necessarily know if the address is valid until we ran our quarterly National Change Of Address process. Melissa Data's contact verify component is updated monthly with national addresses. When the address runs through the component the output is not only "cleansed" but tells if the address is valid (Cass certified) or if there is some other issue with the address.

MatchUp: The matching component has rules that can be modified to look at address or combo of columns to match.

We use Personator to validate any address entered into our system. We also use their GeoPoints to get the most precise, rooftop level geocoding. We do not use the name, email, or phone validation built into Personator.

We use Express Entry Service to fuzzy search; in case there are multiple matches for the address entered, we present them to the user to pick the right one.

We used to use a third-party product that had to be installed and maintained onsite. Since we switched to Melissa Data web services, we do not need to maintain those servers and/or software. Also, we get the most up-to-date addresses from USPS.

Address parsing for property tax roll records and adding Zip+4 to its latitude and longitude coordinates.

When we first started using Melissa Data products, we needed it for cleaning up parcel addresses and adding Zip+4 to its latitude and longitude coordinates. At the time, we were actually using the products for verifying the addresses and cleaning up cities and zip codes so our clients could use the information to send out mailings. Over the last few years, we have changed our direction a little bit. We no longer use the product for verifying or changing any of the address information we get from the state or property appraiser offices. We only use it now for parsing the addresses into street name, suffix, direction, unit, etc. to make our data easier for our clients to search on these separate fields. If the street name that comes from the property appraiser’s office is misspelled, we no longer use Melissa Data to clean it up. We just parse. There are reasons for why we do this that would take longer to explain, but wanted to give you an idea of what we are doing. We do append the lat/long info for any additions or changes that we get when we get the new tax roll updates each year.

Since we have changed directions and we are no longer using Melissa Data to clean up our address information, there are free tools that we can use to do the same thing. We can also write our own parsing routines ourselves, if necessary. The reason we have not looked at other tools yet is because this takes time for our team to change the processes that we already have in place. However, the long-term benefit is we would save this money that we are spending every year on Melissa Data products. We would just have an initial cost of rewriting everything the first year. Also, we can get most of the lat/long information we need from the county parcel maps that we already get for free. We also have another solution to handle the properties that are not necessarily in the maps data (because of timing or other issues). We are looking into this. 

Just giving honest feedback. We have no gripes with the products. We just have to look at ways to keep our own costs down.

We used the trial and we used the custom solution Append for a month or so. On Excel we still use the custom solution today. We use it to find updated contact information for our customers.

We mainly communicate with our customers via email, so we primarily use it to find a phone number so we can contact them more efficiently. This allows us to talk to them and resolve their issues much more quickly.

We do hundreds of thousands to millions of customer deliveries. By using Melissa Data, we are able to scrub and verify, then better validate the end customer's address to ensure a more consistent delivery of products. 

We only use the address hygiene tool, so I can't really comment on their other tools. We did look at their email verification as well, because we also use another service for it. We do not switched to them, but it was not due to the functionality of that service. It was just that it required some reengineering on our end to do so. We did not feel that we had the right capacity to do it at that time. All I can say is we use the address hygiene service, and we have been pleased with it. 

A significant part of our business revolves around the supply of domain names and, as such, we operate an accredited domain name registrar business. One of the requirements of the accreditation is that we validate customer data in relation to their domain name registration. The primary purpose of this is to deter misuse of domain names for fraudulent, phishing, or copyright issues. Being a policy requirement, our initial intention was to simply remain compliant with our accreditation requirements in the most cost effective manner. Melissa Data was well and truly on top of the list when it came to scoping our options for this objective.

We have, however benefited in additional ways from the service, in that our customer database is now significantly more accurate and reliable. This is particularly important when it comes to both cost savings and cost generating measures. There have been tangible benefits in combating fraudulent transactions. The information from Melissa Data is fed straight into our fraud system. This creates efficiency but also removes the need for manual address checks. Similarly, through more accurate data, our marketing department has been able to increase delivery and conversion rates through email direct marketing initiatives.

Data merge, purge, quality, and append.

I was able to dedupe millions of records in the past, and append the most recent email.