Share this
by Lauren Ryan on June 2021
Building and maintaining a clean database largely determines your success with marketing automation.Unfortunately, CRM data quality can quickly turn “dirty” or disorganized without proper rules and protocols.
Maintaining data hygiene and following best practices for CRM data quality will ensure that your organization runs in tip-top shape.
Why Is CRM Data Quality so Important?
The proof is in the numbers
- 53% of top-performing salespeople have a higher confidence in their CRM data than their counterparts. (LinkedIn, 2020)
- Message Personalization is the number one tactic email marketers use to improve performance. (HubSpot, 2020)
- Marketers who used segmented campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
So, it’s safe to say that the quality of your data:
- Empowers your sales team to become top performers for your customers
- Enables your marketing team to deeply personalize messaging
- Increases your revenue up to 7X!
The 6 Pillars of CRM Data Quality
Completeness
How much do you know about your customers? We’d give you a gold star in this category if you’re using the key fields that you’ve built across your contacts.
We recommend aiming for 90% completion or more. For example, we recommend that a field indicating fit for your leads, like company size or industry, have a value for at least 90% of your leads.
Uniqueness
Down with the duplicates! Your CRM should have unique records and be duplicate-free. We recommend implementing data maintenance procedures for your organization to ensure you’re not working with duplicate data.
Timeliness
When was this contact last updated? If you rely on B2B data for customers that hasn’t been updated in a year, 18% of those contacts have probably moved on.
Your B2B company data should be mostly accurate after a year unless revenue is a metric you score on and your customers are in high-growth industries.
We’d recommend an annual refresh (or bi-annual, depending on your sales cycle and business) to keep data up to date and archive contacts that no longer serve you.
Validity
Is your data coming from purchased lists? We really hope not.
Accuracy
Even if your data is earned and not purchased, how much trust do you have that the right information is there? Does your sales team mark the address as 1234 Main St, NYC, NY 0000, just to get past the address requirement? Take a hard look and see what lies your data is telling. You can market to your customers OR trust your sales reps to rely on a platform that’s not telling the truth.
Consistency
Stay on top of your data maintenance. If your team isn’t using your CRM daily to gather and store information, your data will quickly become outdated and inconsistent. Adoption training and usage reporting ensure consistent data entry and CRM utilization.
Where Does Dirty CRM Data Quality Originate?
To improve CRM data quality, it’s also important to understand where bad CRM data quality originates. In many instances, it could be due to poor procedure, and other times, it could be a simple result of time.
- Outdated Information: Over time, it’s natural for CRM data to become out of date or obsolete as customer information changes. Even small changes, such as job titles, email addresses, and phone numbers, can wreak havoc if they are not constantly updated.
- Manual Data Entry Errors: Simple typos and misspellings can lead to a bevy of issues if they are not properly validated.
- Duplicate Records: Duplicate records are common, especially if existing customers re-engage with your website at a later time.
- Inconsistent Data Sources: Inconsistencies may arise if data is sourced from multiple channels or systems without standardization. Varying formats, naming conventions, or data structures can make it challenging to maintain data integrity.
- Lack of Data Governance: The absence of clear data governance policies and procedures can contribute to poor data quality. Without guidelines for data entry, management, and usage, inconsistencies, and errors may proliferate.
- Data Migration Issues: During CRM system migrations or integrations with other systems, data may be transferred incorrectly or incompletely. This is a common occurrence after companies try to pull off their own internal Salesforce HubSpot integration. For example, issues such as inadequate planning or data field mapping can result in data loss or corruption. We offer a HubSpot Salesforce integration course designed to help you clean up your data and optimize your HubSpot CRM.
Should I Hire a CRM Data Quality Consultant?
If you’re dealing with poor CRM data quality after a CRM migration or legacy issues associated with your CRM, be sure to contact the experts at Coastal Consulting for a free consultation.
Our CRM data quality services will help you clean up any issues associated with your HubSpot platform, whether you’ve recently migrated from Salesforce or any other CRM.
Take control of your data to empower your sales staff and increase your revenue once again.