Is Data Quality the "New Black"?

Anytime I talk about data quality with a marketer, I always get the answer “yes that’s really important, but i don’t know where to start as we have so many problems and we don’t have the resources”. Well I believe that now it is more important than ever to implement a data quality plan, as the success of your campaigns depends on it. In fact it is so important, that I believe data quality will be the “new black” for this season of marketing campaigns.

We have found that customers that focus on data quality generate 267% more leads that those who don’t.

Why would that be? Quality data drives your segmentation and targeting, personalization and more accurate lead scores. All of these things help deliver higher quality leads to your sales team.

Let me walk you through the top 3 things you should do to maximize data quality:

1. Identify the sources of all of your new data and prioritize the quality level of data from each of those sources:
   a. Your CRM system may be top priority
   b. But a list from a new sales rep may be lower priority
   
2. Standardize the fields and values you are getting from those sources – whether it is fields on a form, or the information you are capturing at a trade show
   
3. Finally put a system in place that cleanses new data to a minimum standard, “inline” as new contacts are added to your system – this is the critical part of the solution. Steve wrote a great article on the inline data cleansing concept or contact washing machine in April.

With these three steps you will ensure to be in vogue with this season’s marketing campaigns.