The life of a marketer is full of rejections. But many a time, these rejections happen more because you are targeting the wrong audience.
How many times it must have happened that you called a lead only to discover that they aren’t employed in the organization anymore or have been shifted to a different department months ago. Ever did an email marketing campaign that had a high bounce rate? Or ever made a grave mistake of addressing the lead with the wrong name?
Yes, to err is human, and these mistakes happen. But the question is, how often do these err happen? If they happen regularly, it is high time to introspect and do a data quality analysis. Data management primarily has two aspects-
1. Gathering Data
2. Maintaining it
Most organizations gather data through different techniques, but they don’t have a clear understanding of how to maintain it and keep it relevant through changing times. We propose four ways to keep your lead list data relevant through the course of time. Such that it is profitable for the company and doesn’t hurt the prospect of the sales team.
1. Invest in a good CRM
We are living in a digital age. People who work with smarter tools would always have the edge over people who don’t. If you want to have quality data, invest in a good CRM. Spreadsheets are no longer a great place to store your data. Put some serious thought into your data storage, having a CRM helps you have your data in one place, and helps you keep track of your leads.
2. Make your data list format standard-
Having a process and set of rules is essential when you are collecting data. While importing or merging data lists from multiple sources, have a specific set of standards. Doing so will save a lot of your time and will give you better clarity on data.
Have a guide in place that describes the end to end process on how to enter data. Make guidelines for each data entry. It will help keep data organized, and clean, making it easier for future references.
When you classify your data, it becomes easier to prioritize it in terms of value, which further helps in managing resources efficiently
3. Never leave loose ends entering data-
It is always better to have a complete profile rather than an incomplete one. Yes, it is basic, but most of us falter while following the basics. Many a time, we get distracted or do not take data entry as a serious task. It leads to loopholes and incomplete information, which leads to the data becoming irrelevant and useless.
The other primary concern you need to tackle is to figure out a smarter way to work with different sales teams and come on common terms with them regarding data utility. Many a time, what may seem like important data to you won’t be perceived relevant by other salespeople.
That is why it is essential to have the required data fields. Have these fields arranged in descending order of priority, which in turn will help you focus on the most critical piece of information? Is it the email of the lead, or the phone number, or the name? When you have clarity on the kind of information you want, you will eventually strive to collect quality data.
4. Update your data regularly-
Everything changes with time, so why do you think the data you collected six months ago would remain the same even after six months. It is always essential to have a check on the relevancy of leads you have and update them regularly.
Also, look for errors like inaccurate data, misspellings, and duplicate data. This kind of introspection should become a regular process.
As a marketer, always examine your ROI and based on that, filter your data. If you are getting a high bounce rate on your email marketing campaigns, remove those hard bounces from your lists. The reason being they aren’t receptive to your messages, so what is the point of investing your efforts in them? Eliminate unresponsive leads and build a database of leads worth nurturing.
Data is equivalent to oil or gold in the digital era. If you learn the art of handling it well, you would be way ahead of a lot of competitors. Just having a pool of leads won’t drive business, how relevant those leads are, and if the information we have about them is correct is what matters at the end of the day.
