How to keep your contacts up to date

[reneestum]

Hi there, 

One of our biggest challenges with Hubspot is keeping our data up to date.

Example: we know a contact (let's call him Ed) who works at company X. His profile is complete. We don't interact with Ed a lot, but he is a interesting profile to keep in sight. However, when we try to contact him, we find out he is no longer working at X, but is now working at company Y. Information we can retrieve from LinkedIn. 

It is impossible for sales to check LinkedIn every now and then to see if 'their contacts' are still up to date. Is there any way we can make this easier for ourselves? What are your tips and tricks on keeping your contact details up to date? Especially those contacts who we do not contact every week. 

Thanks!

[DGledhill]

Hi Rene,

We had the same issue so developed a tool to track when a contact changes roles.  If our tool spots a change we get a notification to inform us of the change which allows us to update the record.  We've now made this tool commercially available to clients.  If you'd like to take a look please let me know - my email is duncan@contactenhance.com.

Good luck.

Duncan

[AdamLPW]

Hi @reneestum,

It's something I come across a lot.  I'm not sure if there's any way of automating this process, as you can't always rely on individuals updating LinkedIn, but perhaps we could look at this as an opportunity, rather than a challenge.  

Say Ed has left Company X.  You try to contact him and find he's now at Company Y.  So, you reach out to Company X and say "I was dealing with Ed - who would be the best person to take this forward?".  Then, you reach out to Ed via LI or his new company contact details and, hey presto, one contact has become two?!

[reneestum]

Hi AdamLPW,

Thanks for your reply! I like your approach, but I think this only works when you work with a small set of data. I think almost 25% of our data (let's say over 1000 contacts) is like this unfortunately..

[AdamLPW · Accepted solution]

Hi @reneestum,

In that case, I'd say you're long overdue some data housekeeping...

If 25%+ of your contact base have left their previous company, assuming they use company domain emails (rather than personal), you'll be looking at a MAXIMUM of 75% deliverability for any email campaigns.  

You could, of course, just create a bounce report, but I think you can do something a bit smarter than that.  My recommendation would be to prioritise contacts with whom you've previously interacted using an Active List.  

You could set up something like the following:

I.e., contact has bounced, but previously interacted in some way (opened marketing email, had meeting, etc.).  You could then prioritise updating these contacts via LinkedIn by searching out new email addresses at their new companies.  

I don't see any way of automating this process, but happy to stand corrected if there's some swish integration out there!  I'd say you're looking at 250+ contacts who may have retired/left the industry/be interested prospects.  Prioritise these based on those who may have genuine interest in your offering, and you could have up to 250 "new" leads.  Worth the time invested in some manual LinkedIn chasing...

[DBradstreet]

 This is an excellent question and reading through the string nobody answered the question with a solid response. The question is: how can any sales team keep the data accurate and address natural data decay in a large population of contacts?  I've found ZoomInfo to be a poor source of data (they show senior people working for a company when these people have left more than a decade ago)  I thnk the most accurate source of data is LinkedIn.  
Just verifying that emails don't bounce isn't a complete solution either.  If anyone else, like me, does geographic campaigning, I need to know where these people are living and working.  If they have moved from San Francisco to Boise, I need that to get updated.  
What would be the fastest way to run a validation on a list of contacts that email is still good (they still work there) and city and state match a LinkedIn profile city and state?

[reneestum]

I totally agree with you.. Unfortunately not everyone agrees ;). 

But maybe your solution will help to get the process going. Thanks!