Welcome to the CDXZipStream September 2014 Newsletter

Cleaning up Address Data

 

Text data like addresses can be prone to inconsistencies and formatting problems, making it difficult to extract secondary data such as demographics, geocodes, and driving and routing information.  CDXZipStream and particularly CDXStreamer can help clean up an address list, but you may want to first consider using some of the powerful text functions available within Excel to get your addresses into a clean, consistent format.

 

For example, if you're working with an address list that includes unwanted text, like parenthetical apartment or suite numbers, an Excel formula with the text functions SEARCH, LEFT, RIGHT, and LEN can remove this information from anywhere within a string, so:

 1739 Maybank Hwy (Suite 200), Charleston, SC 29412  in cell A1 becomes  

 1739 Maybank Hwy, Charleston, SC 29412

 

using the formula:

 

=LEFT(A1,SEARCH("SUITE",A1,3)-1)&RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-SEARCH(",",A1,SEARCH("SUITE",A1,1)+6)+1)

 

The formula looks complicated but it can help to break it up first into different cells, to search for the location of the string "suite" using the SEARCH function, and then to extract the left- and right-hand sides of the string. These can finally be combined with an ambersand ("&") to create the desired result.  See this resource for more information on Excel text functions.

 

In cases where text functions can't solve the problem, such as misspellings, inconsistent missing commas, or transposed numbers of a ZIP code, we recommend a two-step process where the original address list is first verified using CDXStreamer, which is updated monthly with data from the US Postal Service.  (CDXStreamer can also handle the suite data example above, without needing to use text functions.) The verified addresses are then ready for further analysis by CDXZipStream to obtain geocodes, demographics, and driving routes.  Take a look at this short video showing how to verify addresses with CDXStreamer:

 

 

CDXStreamer is available through subscription and one-time fixed request plans, shown here.  Fixed pricing works especially well if you have a master address list that will need verification once or only infrequently.  To purchase CDXStreamer, just download the demo and if you like it, login to CDXTech.com with the username and password provided in the email for the demo activation.

So Who's Your Target Market?

In last month's newsletter we talked about how to use CDXZipStream to get demographics based on census tract information from the U.S. Census.  We also provided some resource links about how to use demographics in a marketing strategy.

 

But before gathering general demographics data, the first step, really, is to figure out who your target market is. Unfortunately we all can be tempted to default to the "everybody" answer, because no one wants to exclude a potential customer.  A fuzzy picture of the people who buy (or should buy) your products, however, will not help you grow your business.

 

In the article Everyone is Not a Demographic: A Guide to Target Markets for Small Businesses Dan Shewan talks about the importance of first defining a target market and then segmenting and refining the target based on geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral data.  Demographics cover age, gender, family size, household income, occupation, level of education, religion, race, and nationality.  Age data is an especially important demographic for almost all retail sales, and is also very easy to quantify.  So once a target age group is defined, census data can help identify where that group is most likely to live.  Here's a short tutorial on how to get age data by ZIP code using CDXZipStream:

 

Age demographics is available in CDXZipStream Demographics, Premium, and Premium ACS versions.  If you would like to upgrade to a demographic version, log in to your CDXTech.com account and in the "Product Management" area under "My Account", select "Upgrade Licenses" and proceed from there.  A listing of all the demographic variables available in CDXZipStream data feeds can be viewed in this Excel file.

Latest Data Updates

 

Canadian and U.S. data feeds were updated as of September 26.  There were 80 changes made to the U.S. database this month.  If you would like to update your database to reflect these changes, click on the "License Information and Software Updates" icon on the CDXZipStream toolbar, and select "Data Updates" to login to your account.

 

We hope you find the information here helpful for you and your organization.  Please contact us with your feedback and suggestions by replying to this email.

 

The Team at CDX Technologies