Dan MoyleData cleansing. Clean data. Data cleaning. Staying organized. Whatever you call it, keeping your database of contacts up to date and running efficiently is critical to business.
Business leaders know this intuitively— you’re all very smart people. 🤓
And yet…
- 29% of companies believe that their current customer or prospect data is inaccurate in some way
- 89% of companies face challenges in how they manage data
- 95% of organizations see impacts in their organization from poor data quality (source)
What does this tell us? Maybe most of us just get overwhelmed at all the data. Or maybe we don’t know where to start. Or perhaps we’re just not sure it’s for us.
Let’s put that all to rest.
5 Data Cleaning Tidbits You Need to Know
Quality data is the backbone to your data management efforts that will help you deliver a superior customer experience, gain a competitive advantage, and move your business forward.
Let’s look at what you need to know.
Bad Data = Bad Experiences
Good, clean data means your marketing and sales teams have the right information on the right people at the right time. They understand who your contacts, leads, opportunities and customers are, what they’re interested in, the correct contact information and more.
This clean data means sales and marketing are aligned are happy. When you have marketing and sales aligned with your buyer’s journey, your customers feel heard and seen. They’re happier with their interaction. It’s a great cycle to be in as a business.
If your automation software sends a birthday greeting 6 months before their birthday, or your automation uses the wrong name because they typed it in wrong and you didn’t realize it, they now feel like just another number and will probably unsubscribe. Clean data and happier, more efficient people on your team creating great content will lead to happier customers.
Good Data = Greater Efficiencies
Clean data leads to better conversations, more efficient workflows and faster sales. If your sales force spends its time cleaning up data rather than making connections and developing relationships, what happens to you sales?
Instead of spending time looking up whether phone numbers are right because they aren’t consistent in your database, or looking up if this Sara Juniper is the same as that sara e juniper, they can do what they do best: sell.
Another data cleaning tidbit (and benefit) can help you create better messaging. Data cleaning services add to that by allowing your business to focus on communicating those messages better. And more efficient communications leads to happier people in all areas of your business. When you spend less time fixing errors, you can concentrate on the revenue-driving activities vital to your business growth.
Duplicate Data Can Hurt Your Bottom Line
Identify duplicates to help you save time when analyzing data. You can avoid this by researching and investing in different data cleansing tools that can analyze raw data in bulk and automate the process for you.
If your data is dirty and you have duplicate records, you’re wasting time and you’re likely sending multiple contact points to your database. This can result in unsubscribes and reports of spam. That hurts your revenue numbers.
Cleaning Your Data Isn’t Rocket Science
Getting your data clean and keeping it that way doesn’t have to overwhelm you or your team. Carry out data cleansing consistently you can turn your raw, dirty data into helpful, useful and manageable information.
Although the process can be difficult, it’s beneficial. That’s why your business should not skip this core data management function. All the data cleansing activities that are mentioned above will provide you with cleaner customer data which will act as a critical part for contributing to the business growth.
Cleansing the data not only gives you good quality data but it also brings uniformity in the data sets that are merged from different sources. Also, your job of maintaining and storing good quality data doesn’t simply end with cleaning the data. You need to take utmost care of the incoming data so that they are consistent with the similar data sets that are used by the organization.
Stay vigilant. And if your team needs help cleaning up your database and implementing a strong data management process, we’re here to help. Data cleaning services can help get you on the road to making better, more informed decisions that lead to growing better.
Dirty Data Destroys Trust
Want to establish trust in your data for your team? Want to build trust with customers and potential customers?
Clean your data.
For your team, dirty data destroys trust because each time the data burns a bridge, it’s hard to trust a system or a database.
Plus, consumers of your content can spot bad data like wrong dates or misunderstanding where they are in the buying process. Imagine closing on a deal only to receive a “hey new person let’s talk” email from the same business.
Trust destroyed.
Clean data builds trust.
What You Need to do About Your Data
Looking to clean up your data and keep it clean? Here are some steps to get you started.
- Monitor errors
- Standardize your company’s data entry processes
- Validate and maintain data accuracy
- Scrub for duplicate data
- Analyze results from a data audit
- Communicate with your team
The most important step to take next is to identify the sources of dirty data in your database. That way you can prevent inaccurate or duplicate data from piling up. We are big fans of using a tool like Insycle to help make this process easier so that it’s not a tedious manual process.
If you need help cleaning up your database and implementing a strong data management process, learn about our data cleaning services and let’s get you on the road to making better, more informed decisions that lead to greater ROI from your marketing efforts.
