When it comes to fundraising and charitable marketing activities, success rests on the organization’ ability to connect and engage with supporters. You need to have email addresses and phone number for communication, a record of past donations and interactions, etc.
This data can be easily collected. But, making sure it is reliable and usable can be quite a challenge. For example, let’s say, one of your systems shows details for a couple while another shows one of the individuals as having passed away – who do you address in an email? This is where the power of data hygiene comes in. Let’s take a closer look at what data hygiene is all about and 4 common pitfalls to avoid.
Data hygiene refers to procedures and processes involved in cleaning, organizing and updating data. This includes a number of activities such as validating existing data, identifying and removing duplicates, formatting data and enriching incomplete records.
Implementing thorough data hygiene practices in your organization can enhance team productivity, support personalized marketing strategies and guide leadership in the right direction. On the other hand, ignoring data hygiene could keep you from achieving your goals. The 4 most common pitfalls are:
When a donor changes their phone number, they may forget to update the change in your records. Similarly, they may change email addresses, move to a new city or even change their name. Dealing with such outdated data is one of the main concerns for most charities. It may seem like a minor inconvenience but relying on such outdated data can lead to:
A regular donor moves to a new house but you have the old address on file. The result – they may miss out on getting your mail. In turn, the organization misses out on potential donations. Similarly, imagine the impression left by an email that addresses a deceased donor – this could mar the brand’s image and erode their relationship.
Outdated records may not reflect a donor’s current circumstances and recent interactions. This limits your ability to personalize messages to resonate with the individual. For example, let’s say your records do not reflect an individual’s latest donation. If you were to send promotional emails without expressing gratitude, the donor may not be inclined to engage further.
The presence of duplicate data is one of the most common pitfalls of data hygiene. This usually occurs when data is collected in different formats from multiple sources or when data is siloed. For example, a donor may have signed up for a newsletter with only his email address and first name. He may later make a donation mentioning his full name but without referencing his email address. This has the potential to trigger expensive issues such as:
Data duplication could lead to the same individual receiving multiple copies of marketing collateral. This reflects unnecessary expenses for printing, shipping, etc. that lower campaign ROI. Having duplicate entries on your mailing list also wastes your team’s time and thereby brings down productivity.
The presence of duplicate records also skews campaign analysis. For example, let’s say you sent an email to 100 people. Reports show it being opened by 60 people. This indicates a 60% open rate. However, if the list had 40 duplicates, the actual open rate would be 100%.
Charities that store data in multiple databases may also have to overcome the challenge of inconsistent data. The absence of standardized formats and typographic errors are common reasons for data inconsistency. For example, one record may mention receiving a $4000 donation while a typographic error on another list makes it a $400 donation. This can cause issues such as:
Inconsistent data makes it hard to segment audiences accurately. This impacts the relevance of your message and, in turn, the charity’s appeal. For example, a message intended for corporate donors could be mistakenly sent to an individual contributor.
Inconsistent data can cause confusion and increase the risk of duplication while integrating records. As a result, the same individual may be targeted by multiple campaigns with differing goals or may get multiple copies of the same message. Either way, it shows a lack of attention to detail that can spoil the charity’s image.
Charities often do not keep track of where their data came from, when it was edited, and so on. The lack of documentation makes it difficult to understand data lineage. This could lead to ambiguity and incorrect assumptions and issues such as:
Improper documentation makes it difficult to keep databases up-to-date and puts the organization at risk of non-compliance with data privacy regulations. This could result in reputational damage as well as financial penalties.
Having recognized the impact of poor data, addressing these issues quickly becomes imperative.
The first step is to define data quality standards and implement a unified data governance policy. Rather than maintain data in silos, it should be brought together to a central database that can be accessed as required. Next, all incoming data must be verified before it is added to the database. Automated data verification tools can compare data entered in a form against reliable third-party databases to authenticate it. In addition to ensuring accuracy, data verification tools can also enrich data to ensure that it is complete.
In addition to verifying incoming data, efforts must also be made to address data decay. For this, the existing data must be validated regularly. This has multiple benefits. It weeds out outdated data, identifies duplicates that can be merged and can play a part in ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations.
Data hygiene plays a critical role in charitable fundraising and marketing. Not only is clean data more reliable, it also improves efficiency, makes operations cost-effective and fosters stronger relationships with donors and supporters. Ultimately, this helps the organization make a stronger impact on the community.