For as long as marketers have been compiling customer records, those records have been inaccurate and incomplete. A retail marketing executive, for example, recently said that in the process of cleaning up its database the company discovered hundreds of customers with the same email address: 123@aol.com. His anecdote elicited nervous laughter from many in the audience as they recognized that their customer records were also in need of some housekeeping.
Database integrity isn’t just a B2C issue, and the problem can be even more complex in a B2B environment as people change jobs, titles or responsibilities and records quickly become outdated. In addition, B2B buyers are least as likely as B2C buyers to use tactics such as entering wrong email addresses or phone numbers to avoid a follow-up from a salesperson as they research new products or services for their companies.
In response, marketers are developing strategies to bring some order to their customer records, especially as more look to further tailor their marketing messages to specific segments of their database.
“Data integrity is becoming a lot more top of mind thanks to a greater proliferation of sales and marketing automation, and marketers now look to further segment their campaigns by targeting multiple industries with multiple products,” said Shawn Dyer, Director of Data Strategies for Televerde, a B2B marketing agency that helps companies find and convert qualified buyers. “This requires that the data be as clean and accurate as possible. Metaphorically, those records have been up in the attic for a while, where they were collecting dust and no one really knew what was there. Now they’re down on the dining room table where people can get a better look at them.”
The Price Of Bad Data
A push for greater profitability and ROI is also spurring marketers to focus on data integrity, Dyer said. “We’re seeing a real paradigm shift in conjunction with the marketing department now owning at least a certain portion of the revenue,” he said. “Marketers are asking themselves, ‘How much does bad data cost?’”
The answer, according to a recent survey by NetProspex, is that poor records can significantly impact the cost and success rate of a marketing campaign. For example, untargeted email programs cost more than three times as much as targeted email campaigns, according to the company’s B2B Marketing Data Benchmark Report, which found inaccuracies or missing data in a sizeable number of the more than 100 million marketing records it examined. In addition, companies that keep their data clean create seven times as many inquiries as those that don’t.
The report also found that 71% of IT buyers surveyed refuse to provide their real business email address when completing web registration forms.
But not everyone has budgeted for maintenance and repair because the costs are often invisible, experts said. “We just wonder why our campaigns aren’t performing and then buy more leads,” said Mary Firme, Chief Lead Accelerator of ReachForce, a provider of cloud-based software and lead data services. “We find that B2B marketers without a plan to clean their dirty data may waste on average $80,000 to $90,000 for a database of 100,000 records. So it’s a significant problem.
Data will always decay, said Michael Bird, President of NetProspex. “Nearly 50 million people changed jobs in 2011,” he said. “People register online with bad information. They don’t want to give up that information.”
Bird said that marketers can use progressive profiling to help counter the problem of incomplete records. The idea is to have the user provide a little more information each time they fill out a form. “The key is to keep it simple and don’t ask them to give up too much information all at once,” he said. “In addition, you want to provide great content. People are more willing to give up just a little bit of information if they are getting some value in return.”
According to Bird, the first step to a cleaner database is identifying the pain points – email, phone, company details, etc. – and methodically addressing them. “Don’t try to do everything at once,” he said, adding that it was important to determine the most important pieces of customer data based on the company’s targeted audience, business goals and objectives, and the methods of communication.
Stop Bad Data In Its Tracks
One way to ensure a relatively clean database is to do as much verification as possible before it gets into the system, experts explained. “With so much public data out there, there are ways to help fill in the gaps in your data,” said Vaibhav Domkundwar, Founder and CEO of DataDoctor LLC, a cloud-based data quality software platform. “There may be 100 IT professionals in your database that you are looking to target, but only 25 of those professionals have responsibility for security, and the product you are marketing involves security,” he said, noting that LinkedIn and other public profiles can help further narrow the target for a specific campaign.
Having better inbound data from web registration forms, before it gets into the marketing or sales database, also makes the data more marketable, said Firme, adding, “The existing data also needs to be cleaned and appended so it is ready for the next marketing campaign.”
She also recommended a quarterly data assessment and maintenance program. “The marketing improvements will be clear,” she said, adding that marketers need to ensure that organization understands the opportunity and benefit of proper data input records maintenance and provide incentive for improvements across the business.
