The Cost of Bad Data (+ How to Fix It)
Your marketing and sales team decides to run a campaign, personalizes each email and start to send them out. Sounds great! While a few emails are delivered successfully (yay!), a few bounce back and others are ignored (nay!). Before you lash out at anyone (or anything!), you must know that it could be the fault of bad data. But, your team collected the information from the prospects. How can that be wrong?
You are right! Information collected from the prospects isn’t usually wrong when you are contacting them initially. But over time, people change jobs, email addresses, profiles, etc. This happens more often than we think it does. According to a few studies and surveys conducted by Hubspot and Kissmetrics,
Must Read: Data Hygiene: Mastering CRM Data Cleansing for Optimal Performance
What is the cost of bad data? My campaigns are giving brilliant results. Why do I worry?
A study by DiscoverOrg found that sales and marketing departments lose approximately 550 hours and as much as $32,000 per sales rep from using bad data. It is not only about losing enormous amounts of money every year, it is also wasting the time of each rep in chasing down the non-responders. They could have been utilizing that time in a B2B lead generation and engage hot leads instead. We don’t have to mention the lost morale of the sales team when they aren’t able to close deals. What is the core problem? Bad data! We have always advocated outsourcing. But, if you do not want to outsource data gathering and cleaning, you can take a few steps. There are several benefits of clean data which we have discussed here.
Must Read: What Is Database Cleansing and Why Is It Important?
How to fix bad data
You don’t have to pull your hair! Here are 4 ways to keep your data clean.
1. Sales and marketing are friends! It is the combined efforts of marketing and sales that boost sales. While both of them will have their independent systems of following up leads, it is essential that both parties have access to one single database. Both the teams should be able to edit and update this database.
2. Identify and merge duplicate contacts Do you remember the times when the same brand emailed or called you twice for the same offer? They might be different people but the purpose is the same. So unprofessional (and annoying)! Go through your leads and merge the duplicates. You can always automate the process of finding duplicates.
3. Remove inactive leads You have the database of people who aren’t opening any emails or messages for a long time. Are they adding any value to your brand? 1No. If they haven’t taken any action in the past six months, consider removing them from your database. Also, do not forget to monitor bounced email addresses.
4. Have written standards It is important that data is entered in a standardized format. Also, ensure that all entries are free of spelling mistakes.
5. Establish a regular schedule of data cleansing and augmentation At regular intervals, take the time and effort to go through your database in detail. Ensure to build processes and written guidelines around it. This reminds me of Jonathan Burg’s statement,
“”Data is the oil of any marketing engine, and in order to create perpetual demand generation, data accuracy needs to be a top priority. Marketers must be ruthless and deliberate about data quality and standardization at point of entry””
Are you a victim of bad data? Which tools or process did you use to update information and fix bad data?
Email Marketing Summary: Bad data has enormous costs in terms of lost opportunity even when your campaigns are giving brilliant results. Wondering how and what to do? Read this
Must Read: What is Data Cleansing and Appending
Vikas Bhatt is the Co-Founder of ONLY B2B, a premium B2B lead generation company that specializes in helping businesses achieve their growth objectives through targeted marketing & sales campaigns. With 10+ years of experience in the industry, Vikas has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by businesses today and has developed a unique approach to lead generation that has helped clients across a range of industries around the globe. As a thought leader in the B2B marketing community, ONLY B2B specializes in demand generation, content syndication, database services and more.
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