Customers' information and details can change often. This is especially the case with B2B databases because people change jobs often and that means that their business content information changes more often than their personal contact information would. Unfortunately, bad data affects every aspect of your business in a negative way because it negatively impacts marketing, sales leads, customer service, and finance. This article will advise readers how they can be aware of and prevent having bad data filling your contact and email lists.
The Perils of a Bad Data Base
If your B2B database is filled with bad data, it can hurt your marketing, sales, and all communications for your company. Consider these stats from ZoomInfo:
- 30% of people change jobs annually
- 66% of people's title and/or job function change annually
- 43% of people's phone numbers change annually
- 34% of companies change their name annually
- 37% of email addresses change annually
Bad Data Negatively Impacts Sales Too
The accuracy of your data is connected to the performance of your sales team. The following stats show even more evidence as to why it is important to maintain an accurate data base. It affects more than just the email subscriber list or marketing department. If you company deals at all with sales and customer service, it can also be negatively impacted by bad data. Consider the following stats:
- 44% indicated it affected the sales team's ability to reach and/or communicate with prospects in key organizations.
- 26% said response rates to email campaigns were impacted.
- 30% cited direct sales
- Conversion rates are approximately 25% higher for sales leads when a company has clean data.
How to Prevent or Cure a Bad Data Problem
Instead of worrying about building a big database, concentrate on the quality of the data. Don't sacrifice quality for quantity because the longer you have incorrect information, the more it ends up costing your business over time. On average, prospect and customer databases can double every 12 to 18 months. Spend time and effort on cleaning and maintaining them. How can you work to maintain accurate databases for your B2B business?
- Keep in regular contact with your contacts.
- Use an email service provider that automatically removes bad email addresses and alerts you to the problem so that you can manually try to recover or replace it with the correct information.
- Ask contacts for more than one point of contact. When your customer data entry includes phone numbers, co-worker's or supervisor's contact information, a personal email address, there is more of a chance for you to recover the contact if one part of your data is no longer correct.
- Cross reference your data with your social contacts. Using a service like Isentia can help develop your social connectivity in addition to email and phone data. Keeping up with your customers via social channels will help keep your company top of mind and remind them that they want to keep their information up-to-date in order to receive special offers and great content.
- Offer great information that they will miss if they don't get it. This will prompt your customers to keep their data up-to-date on their own because they want your newsletter or information.
- Use the data you have to your advantage to segment, personalize, and target your email list. Adding the personalization to your emails that your sales team would use when calling a prospect increases conversions and helps you make the most out of all the data you have collected.
- Use a site like ZoomInfo that provided the statistics and images for this article. They help verify data, which costs less than carrying bad data over time.
We hope that the 7 points above will help you save your business' data and help lead your business down the path to success. Too often we think about acquiring data from customers but we then often forget about it. When you take the time to maintain, verify, and keep connected with your B2B customers, it will have a very positive impact on all aspects of your business from marketing to sales to finance, and even customer service.