Businesses are constantly collecting data. Whether you collect data through lead generation, outbound sales reps, contact forms or through buying B2B contact data, managing all this information is a full time operation. Unfortunately inaccurate or ‘dirty’ data creeps into your CRM in a number of ways. Through hasty manual entry from your team, prospects filling in forms with dummy information or making typos. Or just simply through the natural progression of time.
How dirty data is harming your business
Your sales and marketing teams can only be as effective as the data that they have to work with. Cold calling or email and postal campaigns can only be successful if the contact details in your CRM are accurate. No one can afford to spend time and money on campaigns that are doomed before they begin.
With 78% of businesses using marketing automation, it’s critical that the information your CRM is feeding to your automation platform is accurate to avoid your campaigns being a flop, or even worse, being completely off target or even illegal, which sends a negative impression of your business and can lead to very serious repercussions.
How big is the problem…?
- 20% of postal addresses change every year
- 18% of telephone numbers change every year
- 25-33% of email addresses become outdated every year
- 60% of people change job function within large companies each year
On average B2B data decays at approximately 40% per year. As you can see, these statistics are significant but the good news is there are things you can do to cleanse your CRM data.
What is a data cleanse and how does it work?
Data cleansing is a process of systematically checking the accuracy or health of the data you have by updating any incomplete data, rectifying typo’s, correctly formatting data and removing obsolete or illegal data that may be living in your CRM database.
If done manually, these procedures can be time-consuming and are still open to human error – this is why it’s always best to work with B2B data specialists. At Marketscan, the major weapon in our fight against the elimination of dirty data is our master database of UK business information. Combining five top data sources, which is rigorously updated and quality checked every month, your data will be matched against this powerful database of over 3m businesses for inaccuracies.
Our systematic processes mean we can check your B2B data and remove duplicates, weed out any dead leads and update the information so you have the most up to date records, and most importantly make sure that your campaigns are compliant with numerous rules and regulations that apply to B2B marketing communications and avoid hefty fines.
Once your data has been cleansed, you’re ready to launch your next campaigns with confidence and be safe in the knowledge that your sales and marketing teams have the best chance of success (and can’t blame dirty data!)
How to keep your data clean moving forward
Depending on the volume of data that enters your database, it’s recommended to perform a CRM database cleanse at least once a year, if not every 6 months, especially if you’re working with high volumes of data, or run large or broad lead generation campaigns.
In addition to performing a data cleanse you can also practise better data hygiene by:
- Archive or delete data that you know is no longer required
- Create rules or standardized practices for data entry within your company
- Limit or create custom permission sets for access to your CRM
Additionally, get into good habits and make sure you have a retention and disposal schedule to enable you to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation. Historical inactive data must be carefully reviewed to ensure you’re not holding onto information for longer than is necessary.
By creating rules or best practices you can do your best to eliminate data at the source. There’s some very clever marketing automation available now that won’t allow prospects to enter dummy information into website or landing page forms. Likewise, using a CRM that also has intelligence built in helps you to combat the fight against dirty data, by making fields mandatory or flagging up duplicate details.
Limiting or carefully controlling who has access to enter or edit data in your CRM database can also be helpful, not to mention essential if you are, or wish to become ISO compliant.
What to do next to clean up your dirty data…
As the statistics show, it’s common to have inaccurate or obsolete data in your CRM but there are ways to tackle it. The best thing to do is to take action, so download your copy of our eBook ‘Clean Up Your Data’ or contact us to learn more about our B2B Data Cleansing services.
