Clean data is the first step to making the most of leads. It becomes easier to connect with an individual when you have all the details to specify your target audience. This alone increases the value of the effort from your team.
If the content is too generic or is not a direct solution to their problem, there is a chance the attempt will go nowhere. Plus, 60% of people change job functions within their organization every year.
However, say you have the entire history of this lead available, along with their current job title and company. Now your team can put themselves in the target’s shoes and drive home a personalized message.
Take Advantage of Your Data
Data Cleaning: “identifying incomplete, incorrect, inaccurate or irrelevant parts of the data and then replacing, modifying, or deleting the dirty or coarse data”
We have heard how important it is to have clean data, but sometimes it does not seem worth the hassle because cleaning it can be time-consuming.
Imagine not cleaning your house for months or even years because it is too time-consuming. Dust everywhere, mismatched socks spread across the room, and so much garbage you do not need.
Your database is home to all of your leads.
Dust off old contacts and update their information. Match new leads to their past information and take out the irrelevant data. It is worth it.
3 Determining Factors
Go through the data and ask: Is the data accurate, relevant, and complete? 40% of email users change their email address at least once every two years.
If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, there is room for improvement.
Ensure the data has accurate, up-to-date information, without duplicates.
Qualify its relevance. Is this data useful?
Complete the data. At least have; first and last name, email address or phone number, and company and job title. Key points of information are necessary when targeting a quality lead.
Does Cleaning Data Work?
If your database could use a spring cleaning, your analytics are skewed as well. Say your target is anyone with the title manager or above with direct involvement in supply chain companies. Keeping in mind that 21% of CEOs change every year, your database is easily cluttered with stale data. The campaign performance will not be directly related to the goals if the audience is not relevant.
Here is an example of newsletter open and click rates before and after a database cleanup:
Open rates jumped nearly 35% and click rates increased 4%. These performance metrics improved simply by using first-party data correctly to target an audience.
How to Help Your Data
As with anything, there are levels to data cleaning. On the surface, there is email verification, checking the contact information in your database to ensure emails still work. Going a little deeper, there is data enrichment, finding accurate information on contacts over time to update changes.
There are tools made for data cleaning to avoid going through manually. An example of a tool for email verification is BriteVerify. A good resource for data enrichment is AccuData or LeadiQ.
Set up a process to maintain your data hygiene, whether that is a weekly or monthly task, or qualifying data before it gets imported into the database.
CTG’s Marketing Support Services have helped maintain clean data to improve the quality of leads for our clients, check out the case study!