A healthy business contact database, with information segmented by your prospects' goals, challenges and buyer journeys, is essential for effectively targeting your marketing messages.
But if your company contact database has become unorganised over time, it can have a draining effect on your marketing performances. Here are a few ways to tell if your contacts' data needs a clean, along with some advice on how to keep it that way.
You don't know where your DATA came from
If you don't know the source or purpose of your contacts' data, it's going to be a problem for a couple of reasons. One is consent. If you have no memory of the recipients giving you permission to hold and use their data, this could get you into legal trouble - particularly with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming soon.
Dead data is another problem. If you're sending out emails that get lots of hard bounces, it'll drag your email deliverability and performance results down. To get around the miscellaneous data problem, you need to take a hard look at your contacts. If they haven't opened anything recently, if they've repeatedly bounced or you can't remember where they came from, you should delete them.
To make sure you keep track of your contacts going forward, try naming your contact lists by date and the reason associated with the data. This'll help you to remember where your contacts came from and why you have their details.
You have missing contact details
Inbound marketing revolves around buyer personas and sharing content that addresses key pain points at specific stages of the buyer journey.
But if the only details you have are names and email addresses, it's hard to tell who your contacts really are. This lack of information makes it difficult to target personas accurately. In this situation, it's up to you to find out your prospects' job titles, responsibilities, goals, challenges and buyer journey stages.
This will make it easier for you to segment your data and target your marketing information. If you can't find any other information for your contacts, then it's time to let them go.
You have lots of invalid contacts
In an ideal world, the only people downloading your gated content are those who are going to become genuine leads. But this isn't always the case.
There will always be people with Gmail or Outlook email addresses browsing the web for free content. Not only are these types of contacts irrelevant to you, but they can decrease the effectiveness of your email sends.
If you have any contacts in your database that don't have a company email address, get rid of them. To prevent any more from getting in, you can set up your landing page forms to only accept valid email addresses.
Clean contacts and effective lead generation
Maintaining your customer data quality and reviewing this regularly is key to a healthy marketing and sales strategy. By removing any data that's irrelevant or could harm your performances, you'll continue to see strong campaign results.
For advice on maintaining your contacts and effective lead generation tactics, please contact us. Our inbound marketing and sales experts would be delighted to help you.
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