Sagacity API

Cleaner customer data, more reliable decisions

Customer records change over time. People move home, contact details become outdated and, sadly, some customers pass away. When those changes are not reflected in a business’s systems, the consequences extend beyond an unsuccessful letter. Marketing budgets are wasted, campaign results become harder to interpret and communications can reach the wrong person.

Sagacity’s Deceased Check and Goneaway Check, available through One Auto API, help businesses identify records that need attention. Both services can be integrated into customer data workflows, allowing organisations to check information at the point it will be used rather than relying solely on an occasional database cleanse.

Deceased Check: communicate with care

Sending marketing to someone who has died can cause distress to their family and damage confidence in the organisation responsible. It also consumes budget on a communication that cannot achieve its intended result.

Sagacity’s Deceased Check identifies matches against deceased records, including data from The Bereavement Register. A business can use the result to flag a customer record for appropriate review or suppression before sending a campaign. This helps teams avoid unsuitable contact while maintaining a more accurate picture of their addressable audience.

The value goes beyond marketing. A deceased match can be an important signal within identity verification, fraud prevention and anti-money laundering workflows. For example, if an application or transaction appears to involve the identity of a person recorded as deceased, the result can prompt further investigation. It should be considered alongside other checks and the circumstances of the case, giving risk teams another piece of evidence when deciding what to do next.

Goneaway Check: know when an address has changed

A customer may still be active but no longer live at the address held on file. Sending correspondence to that address wastes print and postage costs and may leave an important message undelivered. Where mail contains personal information, an outdated address can create an additional concern.

Sagacity’s Goneaway Check helps identify people who have moved from their last known address. A new address may also be returned where available, giving businesses information they can use within their own customer contact and verification processes.

The service is useful before direct mail campaigns, routine customer communications and other postal journeys. By identifying records that are unlikely to reach their intended recipients, businesses can focus their mailing budgets on addresses with a better prospect of delivery and take appropriate steps to update or review the remaining records.

Measure marketing performance more accurately

Good campaign measurement starts with knowing who could realistically receive and respond to a message. If a mailing list includes people who have died or moved away, the reported response rate may reflect poor data quality as much as the strength of the campaign.

Deceased and goneaway checks help businesses separate those issues. Screening records before a campaign can produce a more meaningful audience count and a clearer basis for comparing results. Teams can better judge the effectiveness of their message, offer and targeting when avoidable delivery problems have been identified first.

This is particularly useful for businesses that run repeated campaigns or compare performance across customer segments. Without a consistent approach to data cleansing, changes in response rates can be difficult to explain. Maintaining cleaner records helps marketers make better decisions about future activity and report on performance with greater confidence.

Reduce avoidable mail costs

Physical mail has a cost at every stage, from preparation and printing to postage and handling. Each item sent to a deceased customer or an address the customer has left is spend that could have been avoided.

Checking records before they enter a mailing process helps reduce that waste. For organisations sending large volumes of letters, even a relatively small number of identified records can make a difference. It can also save staff time spent dealing with returned mail and investigating why contact details are no longer valid.

Pay when an identification is made

Both Sagacity services use a pay-per-identification commercial model through One Auto API. A charge applies when a deceased or goneaway record is identified, linking the cost of screening directly to a result the business can act on.

This makes it practical to build checks into regular workflows, including checks before customer contact. Businesses can improve data quality, protect customer relationships and control mailing spend without treating every record screened as a chargeable result.

Whether the objective is more considerate communication, more accurate campaign analysis or an additional identity risk signal, Sagacity’s checks help businesses act on customer data with greater confidence.