Your customer data is one of the most valuable assets your company has. But from my experience of working with clients, data is often the biggest marketing headache they have too.
Being able to mail, email or phone people to announce a sale, share information or announce a new product is key to keeping in touch and doing business. But just how good is your data (or your CRM tool, if you’re using one)? When was the last time you checked your information for accuracy? If you don’t have correct phone numbers or email/mailing addresses for your clients and business contacts, your messages may not be getting through. You may be paying to mail brochures or email sales announcements to the wrong people – or to no one at all.
The bottom line: Without the right contact information, you’re wasting time and money on your marketing efforts. I’ve seen this too many times.
If your primary contact method is email and you’re using a program like MailChimp to send marketing eshots, you’ll get updates when email addresses are determined to be invalid (and MailChimp works really well with a CRM like Salesforce). MailChimp will automatically remove invalid addresses from their system, but if you have a separate in-house database – for instance, a CRM that doesn’t automatically sync with MailChimp – you need to make sure it gets updated, too.
Obviously you can check phone numbers and other data through outbound manual telephone calls to each business. But who’s got the time to do that? Especially if you have thousands to contact.
The good news is that there are companies and online programs you can use to help clean up, verify and improve your data easily, even if you have thousands or millions of records.
Here are some solutions you may want to check out:
- Experian Australia offers a range of software products for better data management including address validation software and email address validation. You can do a free ‘test drive’ of the email program on their site to see how it works.
- The Data Cleansing Group provides services including merging of multiple data files from the same or different programs, verifying data, eliminating duplicate records, standardising formatting and, where possible, finding missing information for you.
- Sensis Data Solutions can assist you with data validation and data cleansing, as well as verify mobile phone numbers and email addresses in real-time so that you can determine whether they’re active.
Need help getting your data sorted to maximise your marketing dollars? Contact Breathe Marketing today.
