A missed email address here, a duplicate customer profile there. They may seem like little things, but dirty data can have a huge impact on a business’s bottom line. From wasted time and money associated with returned mail and packages, to confused, frustrated customers who might decide not to return because of their bad experience, this bad data can cause long term effects if you don’t do anything about it.
The good news is that data cleansing doesn’t have to be hard or overwhelming. We’ve compiled a checklist of five steps that we discovered are very effective to help you make the best of your data and save money.
5 Step Checklist:
- Clean your CRM regularly: Make sure that you only have clean data in your systems. With CRMs and other popular platforms now offering apps and integrations from outside companies, you can take advantage of clean data in whatever way works best for your company.
- Update and add missing contact information: Maybe some of your marketing channels only collect emails. Maybe you’re looking to start building out a multi-channel marketing initiative. Whatever the case, you can add missing information to your customer profiles to make it easier to reach them, like adding mobile numbers to email lists or verifying postal addresses to make sure you have apartment and house numbers or correct ZIP Codes.
- Append demographic, geographic and property data: Learn more about your customers’ habits and preferences by adding information such as age range, interest, income, and more. Adding data like this can help you identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and help you market more effectively.
- Deduplicate your CRM: Duplicate contact data causes frustration for your customers and can cost your business unnecessary time and money. Make sure you deduplicate your data so that each customer has one profile. This will help you gain a complete view of each customer, and help you save on costs associated with duplicate or returned mailings and packages while you’re at it.
- Find New Prospects: You can find new customers with a Customer Look-Alike report, which takes your already existing customer data and finds out the connections between them. This way, you’ll be able to target and reach potential new customers who have the highest likelihood of purchasing from you.
For deeper insights into how you can use this checklist and how it has helped other businesses succeed, check out the article in Mailing Systems Technology “Elevating the Customer Experience: Correct, Enhanced Data Raises the Bar” written by Greg Brown, Melissa’s VP of Marketing. For more information on any of our data quality solutions, reach out to us at www.melissa.com or call 1-800-MELISSA.
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