To correctly complete any job, you need the best resources from the start. In sales and marketing, one of those resources is your database. This hub of contacts is vital for lead prioritization, outbound calling, targeted marketing, reporting and analytics, and more.
In short, a “good” database is foundational for success. But “good” means more than just having a large list of names, addresses, and phone numbers. After all, a phone book has that, right?
So, what constitutes the definition of “good” as it relates to a database?
- It’s current – Data decays at an average rate of 2 percent per month, which means you can expect 25 to 30 percent of your organization’s contact data to go bad each year under normal circumstances. Source
- It’s correct – Check out these Dirty Data Horror Stories. While these stories highlight the worst of the worst, any mistake puts you at risk of tarnishing your reputation or missing out on revenue opportunities.
- It’s duplicate free – More than just a minor inconvenience, duplicate data leads to faulty reporting, ineffective processes, and poor business decisions – potentially dealing a blow to your bottom line.
All of this means one thing: it’s healthy. When it’s unhealthy, your business outreach suffers. Here are the four biggest reasons why database health is important:
Clean data saves man hours
Who do you think is doing all of these emails and cold calls? And, who is going to be running around trying to fix everything? A person, and they probably have enough stress to deal with as is.
Remember, poor data quality doesn’t only hurt whoever manages the database, it hurts the people who are writing the emails, it hurts the reps who are calling bad leads, and it hurts the company that is trying to grow.
Clean data leads to better conversion rates
In sales, you always have a better chance with a warm lead. Even then, there is still a gap that needs to be overcome for success. So, if you are cold calling bad names from a bad list, that gap gets even bigger.
If you use quality vendors and continuously keep your data scrubbed and appended, you will see the higher rates of response and better sales numbers.
Clean data yields better results
With a healthy, well-tagged database, you can segment your contacts into groups and craft specific offers and messages to each one. In return, you get increased results.
And these results are the kind that can make anyone take notice. According to an Experian Marketing Services study, personalized emails delivered six times higher transaction rates than general emails. Trying to do that with a bad database means you are hitting the wrong people and wasting your efforts.
Clean data helps your online reputation
Information technology (IT) professionals don’t want to deal with spam. Nobody does – it’s spam. So, they set up data traps and honeypots to catch it, accomplishing this with both new and old email addresses.
Data that is not regularly cleaned will have email addresses that are being used as honeypots. If you are unknowingly sending to these addresses, you may end up blacklisted by security vendors.
Getting off of a blacklist is not a fun task, so you want to do everything you can to make sure that you are not on it in the first place. Luckily, there is someone who can help you stay off of these lists from the start. You can achieve clean data.
If you still think that there is no way your database could be anything but spotless, consider this: According to Sirius Decisions:
• 25% of the average B2B database is inaccurate
• 60% of companies surveyed had an overall data health scale of “unreliable”
• 80% of companies have “risky” phone contact records
Pretty staggering, but luckily clean data is something any business can acquire and we want to help you do it. Contact NuGrowth today at 800-966-3051 or fill out this form to learn how your business can avoid being part of these statistics and some of the tools out there to help.
