Case Study: Pacific Northwest Ballet reduces returned mail to nearly zero with Experian Data Quality (QAS)

Pacific Northwest Ballet reduces returned mail

Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), founded in 1972 and known for artistic excellence, managed a constituency of roughly 260,000 records (including 11,000 Tessitura subscribers) but struggled with a database full of bad and incomplete addresses. In peak seasons like Nutcracker, outside list imports and hurried data entry produced many errors — for example, a 75,000‑piece mailing returned 12,000 items (over 16%), costing about $8,400 per campaign and wasting scarce marketing budget.

PNB implemented Experian’s QAS address‑validation (QAS Pro for real‑time entry and QAS Batch for existing records), integrating it with Tessitura in one day. The solution cleansed and prevents bad addresses, cut return rates to almost negligible levels, delivered near‑100% core constituency accuracy, sped up data entry, and enabled more cost‑effective, targeted mailings.

Pacific Northwest Ballet

Jim Mitchell

IT Manager