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Michael Cohen's business is media buying. In that fast-paced and fluid world, just one incorrect or missing piece of contact information can mean a client's ad doesn't appear when it should. Multiply that by the dozens of clients and thousands of media outlets his company deals with and you can see why finding a solution to inaccurate contact data was crucial.

Keeping up with contacts while keeping down the clutter.

In the first eight years he used it, Blitz Media owner Michael Cohen thought he knew exactly what his CardScan Executive was capable of doing for him. After all, he was diligent about scanning business cards into its electronic address book and synchronizing it with his laptop and his PDA. As he says,

I got to keep down the clutter on my desk. And that's exactly what I did - quickly, easily and accurately. I thought it was great.

I got to keep down the clutter on my desk. And that's exactly what I did - quickly, easily and accurately. I thought it was great.

CardScan does what we say it does. And then some.

Michael's company buys and sells thousands of media placements every month. For radio and TV spots, print ads and a host of other advertising forms, advertisers look to Blitz to make the best possible buys for their money. And they are very pleased with the results.

However, one thing the company does not do is physically handle the advertising materials. The actual delivery of the advertising to the various media outlets is the responsibility of his clients. So it falls to the Blitz team to keep clients up to date on where, to whom and by when their advertising must be delivered.

Like many enterprises, Blitz uses a computer program specifically designed for its industry – media placement. But when the program consistently failed to provide the accurate contact information clients need, Blitz went ballistic. First, they tried correcting the program themselves. That was impossible. Then they decided to develop their own database. The results were just as unreliable and took hours every week to maintain.

From 20% errors to 2% errors in about two days.

CardScan Executive at work. Contacts are updated every 90 days through the CardScan AccuCard Service.

Then, Michael had an epiphany. There was his CardScan Executive sitting right on his desk. In his digital files were hundreds of media contacts — and all of them were being automatically updated every 90 days through the CardScan AccuCard service. The service, which is included free with CardScan Executive, automatically requests that each person on your contact list update their information once every three months. The request is in the form of an email and recipients are clearly advised that the update is available only to those who previously held the information. Of course, they may opt out of future requests if they wish.

So how, Michael wondered, could he take that highly accurate, reliable and easy-to-use solution and apply it to his problem?

After considering it for a couple of days, he had the answer in three easy steps:

	Create a company-wide CardScan data base with every piece of contact information for about 3500 names
	Create access to the data base by purchasing licenses and scanners for all 10 media buyers
	Develop a protocol for categorizing each campaign so that any buyer could create an accurate, up-to-date list of all the appropriate contacts at any time.

Once they were ready (the preparation took less than two days), Blitz buyers were all set. Now providing an accurate, up to date contact list to customers is easy.

	At the beginning of a media plan, the buyer gives the campaign a category name. Throughout the planning process, every media outlet is tagged with that category.
	Once the plan is finalized, the buyer opens the CardScan file and clicks on the category. Instantly all the media outlets selected for the campaign appear as a list.
	The buyer then goes to the Edit menu and selects Print/All Cards/Address Book. The list is printed to an Adobe Acrobat drive and a PDF is generated and added to the client's media report.

Using this simple approach, Blitz was able to drop its contact information error rate virtually immediately, from over 20% to less than 2%.

CardScan, the more you know, the more you can do.

Michael Cohen has been a CardScan advocate for years. Now, thanks to some innovative thinking on Michael's part, his company, Blitz Media, is putting CardScan to use in a whole new way that benefits not only their company but dozens of client companies that count on them for vital contact information. It just goes to show, the more you know about CardScan, the more you can do.

More about Blitz Media

Blitz Media is a full service media partner for a wide range of advertising clients and agencies. Clients trust Blitz to achieve the greatest return on advertising investments by providing direct access to a broad range of experienced and thoughtful staff of media professionals. Blitz specializes in broadcast, print, out of home and online media and serves clients nationwide. Learn more at www.blitzmedia.com

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Did you know?

You can apply Categories to batches of cards while scanning. Just click on "Batch Options" when you scan the first card. Then choose the Categories you'd like applied and keep scanning.

Did you know?

You can drag and drop contact information from web sites and email signatures directly into CardScan and it'll create a new record for you.