How to Deal with Bad Data

Poor data has an impact on every aspect of a business, starting from sales to customer service. Having a contact database with bad data will bring down your ability to understand who your prospects or best customers are. Bad data brings lead-quality problems. Yet, most companies don’t even realize that they are relying their marketing efforts on outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate data. Eventually, your contacts change their marital status, job position, or get promoted, they go out of business or merge with entirely different companies.

Did you know that in 2017 the amount of data generated, surpassed the volume of data generated in the previous 5.000 years combined? Moreover this trends shows no sighs of slowing down, given the steady rise of data processing platforms and the increasing market demand for more data.

Data decays rapidly. Statistics prove this too:

• 40% of email users change their email address at least once every 2 years
• 18% of all telephone numbers change every year
• 60% of people change job titles almost every year

Source: Kissmetrics.com

The impact of bad data

Your marketing campaigns are only as good as your contact database. No matter how well-written your emails are, if they are not sent to the right recipient, it is just a waste of time and money. Here are the 3 main reasons why you can’t afford to forget about data hygiene:

1. You don’t understand who your prospects are

If you are working with outdated, incomplete or incorrect data, you can’t count on getting an accurate view of your customer base. According to a study by Marc Wayshak, at least 50% of your prospects are not a good fit for what you sell. As a result, your view will be fragmented and your marketing efforts will miss their goals because, well, you are targeting the wrong people. Having lead-quality problems can seriously obstruct your business. On the other flip of the coin, if your database is clean and accurate, this can help you create buyer personas and implement high-targeted campaigns.

2. Little or no knowledge on how to engage with the audience

Bad data can not only impact your ability to understand your target audience, but it also affects your ability to reach and engage with them effectively. In other words, if your contact database is contaminated, and the lead source is not tracked correctly, you are basing your marketing efforts on best-guessing and gut feelings. As a solution, experts from BigCommerce recommend that customer profiles should be updated every six to 12 months.

3. You have no idea how your brand is being perceived

The main goal of every branding strategy is to influence the public on how to perceive your company and service/product. Positive brand perception means consumers are more likely to choose your business over a competitor. It also means that they’re likely to bring in new customers to your business since 60% of customers will refer friends and family to their favourite brands.

Companies often assume they know how their customers feel about them. But, without having accurate data, it is almost impossible to bring any conclusions about the general perception of your brand. If you don’t make data hygiene your priority, branding mistakes will keep on happening at any stage of the process.

Fortunately, the latest and greatest data technology have made data hygiene a simpler process that requires no more than the click of a button. Therefore, many companies invest in tools that can clean and update their database.

How to deal with bad data using Sales.Rocks

Having clean and accurate contact database is a core benefit. The ability to always have up-to-date lists is crucial both for company success and customer retention.

That is why we created a Company Data search tool. This tool helps you reach your desired audience using several filters that will provide your with basic company info like: Location, Industry, Company size, Company status, Website URL, Phone and Email of the decision-maker.

In less than a minute, you will receive a list of contacts that are ready-to-go for lead nurturing. You can focus your time on implementing a marketing campaign instead of manually searching for prospects to fill your pipeline.

For those companies that already have a vast number of contacts, but are not sure if they are accurate, we designed an automated Batch data validation tool. This is a tool that automatically validates phone numbers, email addresses, contacts, and company information. Our platform will pick up all the valid data in your list and put it into an Excel file. A few minutes later, you will be ready to integrate this data directly in your CRM, and immediately start using it.

On the other side, if your company deals with gaps in their contact list, we suggest you to skip manual adding contacts, and try using the Batch data enrichment instead. With this automatic data enrichment tool, you can fill your existing data with company phone numbers, general and direct email addresses, web page URL etc.

Moreover, if you choose to use our Company Search module, there’s an option to learn more about the Web-technologies and Applications used by your listed organizations. In a matter of seconds, you can find out what platform their web page is running on, find out their security layers, get to know what payment gateways they use, and much more.

With the Sales.Rocks tools Company Search and Sales Toolkit  for enrichment and validation, you can eliminate the hours spent searching through company websites and social media to gather the necessary info for filling your pipeline. Our system will do the work for you. No more stress. Just great value and time saved.