Data cleansing & appending are both invaluable
processes that save companies time and precious marketing dollars. There are
many data cleansing tools out there such as software programs that are designed
to fix missing data, remove duplicate information and amend poorly formatted data.
Data cleansing softwares achieve this in a short amount of time.
There are
other steps companies can take to ensure data cleansing & appending
is always a priority:
Enter data accurately
This may
sound obvious, but clean data starts at the input stage. When inaccurate data
is entered into the database, you are setting up problems down the road.
Calculate costs
According
to certain estimates, up to 30% of B2B data is outdated within a year. This
means 30% of direct marketing strategies will fail or be wasted. Or put it
another way, 30% of your budget will be wasted on unclean data. Wouldn’t it be
better if you spent that figure on data cleansing & appending.
Skip over recently used data
Sometimes
the entire database does not require cleansing. If you have recently contacted
a portion of your database, you can assume it is updated. Keep your focus on
data that was not used or contacted recently.
Cleanse data closer to the action date
B2B data
can expire fairly quickly, so do not bother cleaning it 12 months prior to
being used. It is always advisable to cleanse date closer to the action date.
You just have to ensure that you have resources to carry this out. If cleansing
using manpower, on average a single person can cleanse up to 60 records each
day using telemarketing to confirm data particulars.
Ping emails
Checking
whether an email address is “active” is an excellent way to figure out if it
needs attention. This does not require an email campaign, rather there are
tools that automatically ping email addresses. If an address comes back as
“invalid”, you should concentrate your time and limited budget on fixing this
data.
Use LinkedIn
On
LinkedIn, certain tools are available that will inform you if any of your
connections updates their positions. Job-Change-Notifier is one such tool that
will send you an email if a job change occurs. This is an excellent way to stay
on top of your contacts, especially if they move to a different company or have
a new position in the company.
CTPS Check
It makes
good cleansing sense to check your B2B data against a CTPS register. It
contains telephone information of companies who have requested to not receive
sales calls. This will save you marketing bucks and time if you do not contact
companies who are unlikely to respond.
Telemarketing
Telemarketing
is by far the best tool to use for data cleansing and appending. A telemarketer
is able to elicit more substantive and complete answers than an email mailer.
For example, an undelivered email will not be able to tell you if the executive
has left the company or was replaced by someone else.
Investing
in data cleansing & appending tools can save you time, money and
valuable human effort.
