At MCH Strategic Data, we have never wavered in our 80-year commitment to accurate, complete, and timely marketing databases. We focus exclusively on compiling the foremost databases available for business-to-institution marketing, and the QED Education Database is our largest, most comprehensive segment.

We spend millions of dollars to update, maintain, and enhance our databases. The key to our compiling success is the team of experts in the MCH Research Department in Sweet Springs, Missouri. Our team is staffed with full-time, year-round professionals who use a wide variety of techniques to update, verify, and enhance the database that powers our clients’ businesses.

Many of our Research colleagues have first-hand subject area expertise in addition to decades of MCH compiling experience. For instance, the head of our compiling department, Lynn Schear, is an experienced school marketer who has used all the major data providers. She is well aware of the importance of high-quality data and how it affects the success of sales and marketing programs.

MCH is constantly creating and testing innovative approaches to compilation. The list below describes the major techniques currently employed to compile and verify the QED Education Database. MCH employs a wide variety of compilation methods and sources.

• Annual telephone surveys verify school and district telephone numbers, names and addresses, fundamental attributes like enrollment and grade span, key personnel names, and identify new and closed schools. MCH telephone verifies information on every school district and 99% of schools.
  
  
• School rosters and class schedules are used to add, delete, or verify teacher names and job functions.
  
  
• Published web sources validate information and are used to rectify discrepancies among sources and to verify teacher names and job functions.
  
  
• State directories and licensing files assure completeness of the database and add to comprehensive feature attributes.
  
  
• Federal Department of Education statistics provide ethnicity, funding, and other attributes and verify links between schools and districts.
  
  
• Postal address verification ensures that mailing addresses are always deliverable and receive appropriate postal discounts.
  
  
• Email address delivery verification assures deliverability of email addresses and maintains CAN-SPAM compliance.
  
  
• Home address compilation and linkage adds an alternative delivery address and employs National Change of Address processing to track staff relocations.
  
  
• Geospatial processing identifies and rectifies questions and issues arising from geo-location analysis.
  
  
• Customer-provided information from the GetThere™ Guarantee program quickly identifies questionable addresses, allowing MCH to investigate and update information.
  
  
• Internal Quality Control Audits include dozens of automated and manual checks to identify and correct errors before they get into our production database.

The MCH compiling professionals schedule these and other compiling processes to ensure that the QED Education Database is as comprehensive, complete, and recent as possible.