The Importance of Clean Marketing Data for Higher Conversion Rates
Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Michael Powers, Events/Buzz Coordinator for NetProspex.
What good is data if you can’t properly use it?
You work hard to collect your marketing data. But sometimes, you collect so much data that it’s hard to make sense of all of it. In these instances, there’s a lot going on in your database, and it’s up to you to get a handle on it to ensure a good return on investment on all of that data.
Maintaining a dynamically changing database on your own is no easy task, especially when your job responsibilities pull you in so many different directions every day. Do you know how many records in your database are fully complete? How many are made up of folks who lied on their registration form? Or even duplicates? Just look at your LinkedIn feed to see how many people in your network have changed jobs in the past year alone. Do you think they notified vendors when they left? The answer to any of these questions could be no, and if so, your database is becoming less actionable as each day passes. We have found that contact information decays at the rate of 2% per month!
Let’s take a step back. Ask yourself: How is your company growing your database? Is it growing organically through networking and referrals or, like most businesses, is it a combination of organic growth, purchased lists, and crowd-sourcing? It’s best to gather organic data from crowd-sourcing for the best accuracy, and it’s also beneficial to partner with a trusted data vendor in your industry that is knowledgeable and reliable.
Because the idea of Big Data is still prevalent, it’s imperative to accumulate data that is accurate. If it’s not, the data will slowly tarnish your CRM and your company’s credibility. Once your data is gathered, you will need to check for a few items that could throw off your CRM’s credibility such as:
- Duplicate records
- Obsolete contacts that are no longer in the noted position or company
- Incomplete contacts that are missing fields such as job title, phone number, or email address
- Incorrect contacts containing information that is inaccurate such as telephone numbers, job titles, or email addresses in the wrong format
The impact of bad data on demand creation is such that for every 1% of data quality improvement, marketing can generate 5-6% of incremental revenue. As marketers and sales professionals looking to improve the prospecting process, it is very critical to inspect for the items listed above. Confirm the accuracy of your data by cleaning the list and by double-checking their veracity by sending emails to listed contacts and waiting for any bounce-backs or responses noting that they have the incorrect person. After you confirm the accuracy of your list, you can expect a higher conversion rate.
As your company grows, you’ll need to increase the amount of leads for your sales team to pursue. That means this data cleaning cycle will need start all over again. Therefore, it is very important to uphold solid data accuracy within your company’s CRM throughout every step of your business’s sales cycle.
If someone in-house is not able to properly maintain a healthy database, it isn’t uncommon to work with an industry partner to provide marketing data services. Using marketing data services to optimize your databases leads to improved response rates, better targeting and segmentation, and ultimately a shorter sales cycle. To learn more about how NetProspex can help you handle your constantly changing and growing databases, click here.
Facts provided by NetProspex’s “Buyers Guide to B2B Contacts.”
Michael Powers is the Events/Buzz Coordinator for NetProspex. You can find him on Twitter: @Powers_M33 or add him on LinkedIn.