Your business database cleansing questions, answered

Your marketing campaign results depend heavily on your data quality. A poorly maintained database can severely damage your results, insights and reputation. You need consistent, accurate and compliant information in your business database.

Business database cleansing involves identifying and updating (or removing) any erroneous data within your database. This is important because it improves data quality and enhances performance. When you cleanse (or scrub) your data, all outdated or duplicate information is removed, leaving you with a top quality business database.

But scrubbing your database once isn’t enough; data decays at an alarming rate so this process must be repeated on an ongoing basis to maintain its quality. Here are the answers to some of the most common business database cleansing queries:

Why is business database cleansing important?

For the highest chance of success, your marketing communications need to be closely targeted to your audience. As well as ensuring your content is thoughtful and high-value, you also need to perform regular data scrubbing to:

• Remove errors
• Streamline information
• Improve the efficiency of your database
• Target the right audience
• Boost customer relations
• Deliver higher marketing ROI
• Mitigate domain reputation issues

As we mentioned, if your database is weighed down by out-of-date contacts, your engagement information will be distorted. That means you’ll get an inaccurate view of campaign performance and potential.

By cleaning up your database, you should see your conversion rates and ROI improve. If you continue to target poor data, however, you’ll eventually suffer IP reputation damage and even potential blacklisting.

What does database cleansing do?

Data decays incredibly fast because people frequently change jobs or titles, and companies relocate or go out of business. It’s important to identify and eliminate outdated information from your database regularly, or your communications will be ineffective and your engagement insights will be skewed.

But are you worried that cleansing your database will remove large chunks of crucial information?

Don’t be; there are several facets to the data cleansing process and removing (unusable) contacts is just one of them. Business data cleansing will:

• Standardise data entry and formatting
• Amend incomplete or incorrect data
• Append new contacts’ information
• Deduplicate contacts
• Remove irrelevant or outdated contacts

How do you know if your database needs cleaning?

In short, if you hold business data, you will need a business database cleanse sooner or later; all databases need regular care and attention to maintain their quality.

But how do you check the urgency of your cleansing requirements?

Some businesses offering data cleansing services will provide a data quality audit for free, so you can work out how urgently you need a cleanse and how your data could be improved.

How often should you cleanse your business database?

Unfortunately, there is no fixed answer to this question. Firstly, it will depend on the nature of your business and the duration of your buying cycles.

On average, six months is a good rule of thumb for most businesses. But bear in mind, business database cleansing is a much quicker and easier process if you keep on top of it. Not to mention, the more regularly you do it, the cleaner you data will remain.

Still have questions? Why not get in touch with one of our friendly data experts. We can advise you on best practice data management and how database cleansing can boost your business. Or we can run a free, personalised report to show how your business data could be improved.