Importance of Clean Data for Business (and How to Keep It That Way)
The lifeblood of every successful and informed business is squeaky clean data. It is virtually everywhere, which makes it easier for companies to gather. The challenge comes in keeping the data updated and using it responsibly. Organizations that don’t have any data strategy need to realize that data integrity is crucial, and it can affect their business in a big way. To succeed and avoid data misuse and privacy concerns, you need to dedicate time and effort to developing an ironclad plan for collecting, maintaining, and utilizing data.
How is Data Collected?
Data collection is now more accessible thanks to technology. Businesses can utilize technology to obtain data from prospects in different ways, including:
– Website Tracking
– Social Media
– Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
– Marketing Automation
Knowingly or unknowingly, businesses gather an infinite amount of data from customers, website visitors, account followers, audience, and leads daily. It is essential that the company uses the data carefully and adequately.
How?
Create a culture that puts importance on the data collected. Implement carefully considered and planned strategies for using the data. Shift towards a data-driven company and be wary of the repercussions of misusing data. Keep in mind that there are enormous consequences such as incurring massive penalties and losing many customers.
People who provide you with data trust you with the information that you have gathered about them. It is your duty to provide them with customized experiences based on the data that they have provided. If you don’t do this or misuse their information in any manner, you lose customer trust, which results in losing the customer.
Why Do You Need Clean Data?
It is vital to have clean and updated data to:
1. Know your audience better
For your business to succeed, you must understand your audience so you can provide solutions to their problems, address their needs, and ease their pain points. If you have incorrect, outdated, or incomplete data, you will have difficulty painting a complete picture of your audience to understand them better.
Having a high level of trust in your data will translate to having more confidence in communicating with your contacts and getting to know them better. Once you have that deeper understanding, it will be easier to turn your prospects into clients, and most importantly, to retain them.
2. Enhance your decision-making skills
Better business data means better decisions. With clean and correct business data, you will have the power to make decisions aligned with your objectives. You will also be able to make more informed decisions that can help you achieve your targets and obtain the results that you’re looking for.
On the other hand, incorrect data can lead to losses that can hurt your business. If not appropriately addressed, it can lead to ballooning costs that will affect your business’s bottom line. To avoid this, you should have a data-backed approach with the help of Searchbug Business Services.
3. Boost company productivity
Bad data is not only inconvenient, but it also leads to loss of time and productivity — and we all know, time is money. So, instead of using their time on other essential and revenue-generating tasks, they have to address the unnecessary and time-consuming issues that arise from bad data. The time people spend answering dissatisfied customers and prospects who received the incorrect information could have been the time spent on other activities that nourish the business. Clean business data eliminates this issue, ensuring that people’s time is always spent on meaningful tasks.
How to Identify if You Have Clean Data?
To know if your business data is clean and effective, it should be:
1. Valid – meaning that the different elements in your data are practical and usable.
2. Accurate – your data must be precise so you can make proper estimates and projections for your business. It ensures that you are confident when communicating information to your prospects and clients.
3. Complete – there should be no missing required entity in your data. For instance, information about the name, phone number, address, and email address should be present, and incomplete data will likely result in errors or productivity loss.
4. Uniform – there should be a standard format and structure in your data to avoid confusion, and it will also help make integration into campaigns a lot quicker.
How to Manage Your Data and Keep It Clean?
With tons of data at your fingertips, it is imperative to uphold your duty to your audience and prospects to use their data responsibly. Make sure that you follow your data strategy to the dot and adjust it whenever necessary. An effective plan can guarantee that your database is constantly updated and clean. It secures all of your information and prevents any misuse that could hurt the company or displease your audience.
A well-maintained database matters because it aids in the customization of experiences and segmentation of your market. It helps you create effective experiences that convert a lead into a customer. Furthermore, it reduces expensive and embarrassing mistakes. Lastly, it allows you to create customer personas to boost your customer base and attract more people to be loyal to your brand.
Here are some ways to manage your business data to keep it clean, properly maintained, and updated.
1. Verify new data
You must have a company-wide system to make sure that you correctly enter new and updated information into your database. A way to do this is to ensure that everyone inputs the correct details such as name, phone number, and email. Set a standard format that everyone must follow to avoid inconsistencies and confusion. Make specific elements mandatory so that the required information is always there.
Instead of manually inputting data, you can append data to a list of old contacts using this Bulk Data Append tool if you have an existing database. It will save you time verifying the new data because the data appended is guaranteed up-to-date.
2. Refresh your data regularly
Data degrades over time. According to Salesforce, it is estimated that as much as 70% of your data can become outdated every year. A customer can quickly change their phone number even before your next product launch, or a lead can move more often than the updates you offer on your services.
It is best to refresh your data regularly to have the right information about the right person at the right time. You would not want to be spending time calling deactivated phone numbers or sending marketing materials to the wrong address. Get rid of old or disconnected phone numbers, outdated addresses, and inactive emails and better communicate with fresh customer data.
To help you with keeping your data updated, run your list through this Batch Verify tool.
3. Remove duplicates
Duplicates are inevitable once your database grows. Regularly check your database for duplicates and remove them as they come in. Keep in mind that you need to remove duplicates with caution in order to avoid accidentally removing good information, which could mean missing an opportunity.
If you have a massive database, it is best to use a marketing automation platform that lets you automatically delete duplicates. It helps reduce the risks of removing important client information because you thought it was a duplicate and saves you time from creating a duplicate when new information comes in.
4. Identify garbage information and manage it accordingly
When collecting data, it is possible to come across people who enter junk details when they sign up. For instance, a prospect may input a garbage email such as “abcde@abcde.com” to avoid sharing factual information. You want to avoid storing this information because it is useless, so you can set up smart campaigns to identify fake email addresses and then delete, blacklist, or suspend these contacts.
If you already have a database, you can verify hundreds or thousands of email addresses at once with this Advanced Bulk Email Verifier tool. Once you have identified these contacts, the best way to manage them is to put them in a separate group that you never interact with. It is best not to delete them, so you don’t remove any history of that contact, whether valid or not. It is important to keep a record even of these junk contacts. If you can find a platform that lets you keep an inactive group of contacts, then that is the most economical way to keep a clean database.
Clean Your Data and Get to Know Your Contacts!
Searchbug can help your business keep your data clean so that you can succeed. You can get the information that you need and manage it better. You can also use Searchbug tools to get to know your contacts. If you want to see if it works for you before running your entire database, your first individual instant people search is free!
Sign up now and sample free contact data before uploading your first list.