Audit your data – improve your pipeline

When I receive an item of relevant marketing material, such as an email from my local Golf Club or a direct mailing on Skiing holidays, I always reflect on our business of supplying accurate data - and truly enjoy seeing it working well in practice.

Maintenance, Maintenance, Maintenance

Our technical team are permanently engaged on the maintenance and improvement of our own databases (both B2B and B2C), as well as the integration with our partner lists – to ensure they offer the most up-to-date information and metrics for all contacts.

Whether data is your business or just the means to communicate your message to your target audience, the fact is that data is a major part of all of our lives in one way or another – both as business professionals and as consumers in our personal lives.

Make or break sales

The value of a well-maintained database is second to none, and can truly make or break the sales and marketing efforts of a business.

Sales dictate the success of a business – so the accuracy of your database of prospects and clients, who may place an order with you, is vital to that success.

Communication pitfalls

I have worked with many clients who have experienced various issues in terms of wasting budget and inadvertently communicating with the wrong people

• Budget wasted by marketing to companies that no longer exist:
  - Misused postage costs
  - Unproductive telesales efforts
  - Potential IP damage when emailing.
• Damaging a brand by using inaccurate mailing information – this is especially important when you’re mailing sensitive audiences (e.g. elderly contacts where some of the audience may have passed away).
• Higher postage costs due to using inconsistent address formats when mailing. Uniform and consistent address formats not only look more professional, they can improve your mailing discounts.

Our posts on data decay explain how business data can decay by around 40% per annum. In our experience the decay rate for consumer data is not far behind – so whether you’re in a B2B or B2C organisation, reviewing and updating your data is vital.

Audits

An audit of your existing database can review and report on completeness, and identify where errors exist and what amendments can be made. Audits can identify additional contacts or updated contact details, and inform where additional detail could be added - such as age, sex, industry, etc.

From there, appends of this additional information can be made, formatting issues fixed, and future profiling undertaken. How well maintained do you think your database is? Do you think an audit could improve your data? Let us know in the comments below