Headquartered in Cincinnati, Cintas Corporation provides highly specialized services to businesses of all types throughout North America. Cintas designs, manufactures and implements corporate identity uniform programs, and provides entrance mats, restroom supplies, promotional products and first aid and safety products for over 500,000 businesses.
Like any company with a large, widespread customer base, Cintas knows that communication with customers about new products and offerings can be a daunting task given the fluid and dynamic nature of customer data. Companies change addresses. Contacts within organizations come and go. Businesses merge with or acquire other businesses. As a result, customer data – the foundation of Cintas’ sales and marketing efforts – is in a constant state of flux.
Cintas is also looking to market its products and services to new target audiences. As a result, the company needs to remove existing customers from prospect lists to avoid confusing their current client base with messages intended for new contacts.
Cintas chose DataFlux to ensure that information for various mailings was consistent, accurate and reliable. With DataFlux, they can quickly assess the quality of their customer data – and compare existing data to third-party marketing lists to remove existing customers from prospect communications.
“DataFlux technology allows our data analysis group to conduct in-depth data matching and standardization techniques,” said Becki Wessel, manager of marketing databases for Cintas. “We can use the pre-built standardization schemes to identify and resolve duplicate, inaccurate or invalid data. Or we can create our own standardization routines, which helps us tailor the technology to meet the specific requirements of an individual project.”
Cintas also utilizes DataFlux technology to correct and validate lists of prospective customers that are transmitted to sales staff. Instead of receiving raw data from prospecting efforts, DataFlux helps Cintas analyze and correct information before sending this data to the sales force.
With DataFlux, Cintas now has tighter control over customer and prospect data. By removing duplicate or inaccurate records from existing data sources, the company lowered the percentage of unnecessary or wasted communications. The improved customer data translates to identifiable savings in reduced production and mailing costs. Removing existing customers from prospect mailings led to even more savings from database marketing efforts.
For the sales group, better customer data means that they receive more accurate and timely leads on a regular basis. Instead of contacting an existing customer or an unreachable address, the sales force spends more time working actionable leads, leading to productivity gains throughout the sales cycle.
“At Cintas, customer data is a crucial element to any of our outreach programs, whether driven by marketing or sales,” Wessel said. “DataFlux's sophisticated matching technology helps us quickly inspect and correct new and existing data. With DataFlux, we are confident our customer and prospect data is a useful tool that helps us communicate more effectively with our target audiences.”