„The more, the merrier” approach is one of the biggest myths Marketing Automation is constantly busting. It regards contact lists mostly: is huge database always an advantage? No! List full of inadequate data not only gives you a false picture, but also lowers your reputation and deliverability of your emails. Shortly speaking, you land in spam folder.
How much of your data is garbage?
Pretty much, actually. Data decay on average rate of 2 percent per month, so 25 to 30 percent of your contact data becomes useless each year. Sirius Decisions research adds more: 60% of companies surveyed had an overall data health scale of “unreliable”, and 80% of companies have “risky” phone contact records. And 61% of companies find 35% of their data incomplete.
How inaccurate data can hurt your company?
The problem is that outdated or incomplete records don’t only impede workflow, but have much more profound – and negative – impact.
– Enlarging volume of your database without bringing any value: so you pay more for services which price depends on amount of contact or base volume, and while you are charged for such contacts, they can’t possibly produce profit,
– Overshadowing real data: you get unreliable picture of the situation (amout of users, OR and CTR), undermining your analytics,
– Lowering your reputation: considerable number of inactive email inboxes is transformed into spam traps, so if a given sender delivers a lot of messages to such addresses, the provider sees him as spammer,
– Wasting time of your salespeople: a salesperson who gets 12 incorrect numbers wastes 20 hours. Think of productive things he could accomplish in that time!
Most popular mistakes
Most popular mistakes in databases are:
- Incomplete or missing data
- Out-dated information
- Duplicate data
- Spelling mistakes
- Data filled in wrong boxes
When you know what bad can happen to your database and are aware of the consequences, let’s do something about it!
Quality over quantity
Change your attitude and see that quality of your data is more important that amount of records. Make your employees see that, so they are eager to react when they spot an inaccurate data (e.g. spelling mistake). But their attention can replace regular datanase cleansing.
1. Prevention is better that cure: contact forms
Make sure that your contact forms and all subscription boxes facilitate giving propoer data. Use format checking to ensure email addresses are valid, double opt-in and progressive profiling to reduce risk of providing false data deliberately.
2. Sources of data
Adding contacts from purchased list? Risky move. You have no idea of what addresses that might be, how much of them is accurate and how they will affect your reputation. One unfortunate purchased list can decrease your deliverability for years.
Solution? Build your database organically and include only people who agreed to receive your messages.
3. You need a CRM
Remember that you need a CRM. If you use SALESmanago, you will get a CRM that combines customer information with behavioral data, so you have all intelligence on the user in one place. It is extremely useful, e.g. to salespeople: then they call a lead, they have fast and easy access to all information about what given user searched for, downloaded or was interested in. It boosts the customer satisfaction when they are treated with understanding for their individual needs.
4. Re-engagement campaigns
It might sound radical, but makes sense. Re-engaging campaign is addressed to inactive users (with very low scoring) and consists of a couple of emails with ultimatum: do they want or don’t want to be kept on the list. If they don’t react (or click “No, I don’t want to be on your list anymore”), their addresses are removed.
Below we show an example of Piperlime campaign: magenta and comparing brand-customer relationship to romance catches eye, so if your reader doesn’t respond to something like that, you wouldn’t be able to send anything to him anyway.
Find ore great examples of re-engagement campaign on Impact Blog
5. React to bounces
Most marketers treat bounces as necessary evil: they see them , but don’t react.
Bounce is a sign that message can’t be delivered because of one of two reasons: either permanent (e.g. given address doesn’t exist), and we call it hard bounce then, or temporary (e.g. given user’s invbox is full), when it’s referred to as soft bounce.
Loosing customers in natual
If you’re scared of missed opportunities, don’t. Losing customers is a natural part of business – don’t feed yourself on illusions of massive database, but focus on getting realistic picture and gaining new ones.
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