Data cleansing

Data is the oil of the 21st century! Keeping address data up to date and clean is a challenge for everyone who works with large databases. No matter whether eCommerce, classic mail order, insurance companies, banks or donation organisations. Depending on whether you are dealing with B2B or B2C inventories, there are specialised providers for your data cleansing. We will gladly take over the coordination and order data processing for you or provide you with contacts directly. 

  • Relocation matching 
  • Deceased matching
  • Unknown spoiled persons
  • Duplicate check
  • Robinsons (refusals to advertise)
  • Company expired or merged
  • Insolvencies 

Avoid expensive wastage, use the opportunity to find customers/donors who have moved away and maintain your good image at the same time. Reactivating contacts you already know is usually more successful than "cold calling" with rented third-party addresses. Read more about this topic below or ask us directly about the possibilities.

Campaign for fundraisers

Together with our partner ABIS GmbH, we are making an unbeatable offer* for fundraisers and NGOs. This offer is valid for the period 15.04.2024 to 30.11.2024:

  1. You will receive a free audit of your address database and learn everything about the quality of your donor file. Here is a sample of the summary. The full audit provides even more information.
  2. On the basis of the audit, we prepare a profitability calculation: costs, potential savings, opportunities. We only need a few details from you (unit costs of mailings, mailings per year)
  3. If you place an order, you will receive discounted fundraising prices from our partner ABIS. This is around -20% off the regular price, depending on the type of hit.
  4. Adresslabor carries out a free address check and name check B2C for you before handing over the data to ABIS. This increases the hit rate and matching quality in the subsequent process.  
  5. The entire consultation, processing and organisation is handled by Adresslabor. Free of charge.  

Guaranteed added value for you! You can only win. 

The free audit will tell you how many of your addresses are no longer deliverable or are duplicates. Because the recipients have moved to an unknown address, are deceased or have been created more than once. You receive new relocation addresses for your outdated contact and thus have another chance to generate donations for your organisation. You block the undeliverable or duplicate addresses in your database and save the costs of mailings to these addresses in the future. Or you can add the new relocation address to your database and your advertising message will be delivered again. With every chance of receiving donations. If the audit shows that there is no added value for you, there are no costs. And you have the good feeling that you have done everything right so far. 

We have already concluded the agreement on commissioned data processing (GDPR) or you can do so directly here. Adresslabor has a corresponding agreement with its partner ABIS GmbH.     

* Valid from 10,000 addresses in the audit. For smaller databases, please contact us to discuss the options.

Promotion for all other customers

All other customers enjoy the same benefits as fundraisers. Except for the special prices for donation organisations. But the same applies to you: no added value, no costs! And a free DACH address check and a B2C name check in advance. You can use these results in any case, regardless of whether or not you place an order for inventory cleansing following the audit. Minimum inventory: 10,000 addresses. 

Please feel free to contact us by phone or e-mail.

Our recommendation! When does it make sense to clean up your data?

It makes sense to clean up your inventory if you carry out relatively expensive print campaigns and also send them to customers/donors from whom you have not seen any activity for some time. The costs for creation, paper, printing and postage can quickly amount to 50 cents or more, even for a 20 gram mailing. If you send this 4 times a year, you will end up with €2.00 per recipient. However, if the recipient can no longer be found at the address, your advertising budget is wasted. If this affects 10,000 cases, the loss would already be €20,000 per year. It might be worthwhile to take a closer look (or even better: regularly).

Scatter losses not only cost money that could be saved. They also don't bring any money into the coffers and, in the worst case, damage your image and ecological footprint. So if you can avert a loss of €20,000 with an investment of €10,000, for example, we would strongly recommend it. Especially if you can generate additional added value by updating your relocation addresses.

If, on the other hand, you are purely online and only use SEA and SEO or email marketing, it will be less worthwhile for you to clean up your inventory. It's always a trade-off. Our free consultation, the free audit in combination with a profitability calculation will help you make the right decision.

Why customer portfolios become "obsolete"

If you are lucky, your customer/donor will proactively inform you of a new address or a change in status. Unfortunately, this is not often the case and sometimes no longer possible. Here I would like to refer you to the website of our partner ABIS. In 2018 there were in Germany 

more than 8 million relocations
approx. 900,000 deaths
approx. 400,000 weddings
approx. 150,000 divorces
approx. 11,000 newly created, divided or renamed streets
approx. 163 changed place names


Depending on the age of your target group, you are more likely to be affected by one or the other reason for undeliverability. In any case, it may be worth taking a look at the extensive databases of well-known providers. The best-known source of relocation data from Deutsche Post forwarding orders is certainly "Post Adress". However, there are also other providers who provide data pools for address cleansing in cooperation with large publishers or mailing houses. ABIS utilises all of these sources and is the leading provider for the cleansing of personal master data in Germany.  

My supposedly deceased donor is still donating. And now?

Yes, this can happen, but it shouldn't put you off. There is a solution. The reasons can be: Either a "mismatch" of your customer against the reference data. Or your donor is actually deceased and the partner deliberately leaves the sponsorship, standing order or direct debit mandate in place because it is important to him/her. Here is the solution for such cases: Simply supply the date of the last activity with your address details. In other words, the date of the last donation, the last purchase or the last contact. If the event (e.g. date of death) in the reference data is before your last contact date, such hits can be ignored. You pay nothing for this and everything remains as it is. 

Single use or permanent use?

In general, information on relocations, people who have moved, etc. can be obtained at a favourable price for single use. With this "wash synchronisation" you do not receive any information for your database, but only clean up the mailing file of a planned mailing. This is interesting if you only rarely plan larger mailings. 

In most cases, however, we assume a regular "trigger chain" in which your addressees are contacted several times a year. Continuous use is a good option here. You then receive undeliverability reasons, duplicate flags or new relocation addresses for permanent use in your database and can either block affected contacts for selections or adopt new addresses and names.  This is more expensive, but the more campaigns you start per year, the quicker it pays off.    

What does data protection say about this (GDPR)? 

Every product available on Adresslabor is GDPR-compliant. You can be sure of this and we will of course document this in writing. First of all, according to GDPR Art. 12, 16-17, 82-83, data subjects have a right to rectification of their data. It is also in the interest of your customers/donors that information is maintained correctly. It is important that you as the client and we as the contractor have concluded an agreement on commissioned data processing. We have either already done this or can do it online here. Including technical organisational measures (TOM).  If you have any questions, please contact us.