Jul 11, 20217:39 AM - edited Jul 11, 20217:40 AM
Inbound Professor
How often do you clean your contacts database?
We’re in a data-driven era, where datasets are shared between marketing, sales, and customer service teams to increase organizational effectiveness and facilitate alignment. When you have high levels of inconsistent data, it’s not just one team taking the hit. It’s everyone. The entire company. The fallout from that bad data extends to every corner of your business that the data touches. With that in mind, how often do you currently audit and clean your contacts database? Once a month? Every quarter? Once a year? What does the process look like? Share your thoughts and current schedule.
If there is an automated way that notfies a contact moved from X company to Y company that's ideal, becasue that creates an opportunity to sell to Y company becuase the person is in favour of our product. I belive updating weekly also will be ideal but its not feasible thats why Quarterly updating or AI based updating could be the options left with.
I think it would could differ, depending on the business/comapany. We might need to update our database once a year but a client might need to do it quarterly. The important thing is that you have a process in place, someone who owns that responsibility and a cadenace to ensure you have the most up to date database, when it makes the most sense for you and/or your client.
Every 6 months in addition to regular good behaviors. It is important to learn from what one cleans up - do we need to work harder to fill in all important fields? Do we have repetitative errors we can improve? It is also helpful to build in "clean-up" efforts after certain events: for example, send an email newsletter. Review all data including bounce backs, incomplete fields, etc.
My position coordinates multiple annual events. I audit and clean those contact list annually. I do a soft clean during the year when any changes are brought to my attention.
We have a continuous cleaning process, we try to clean our contacts database by regularly checking and cleaning different areas - clearing out inactive contacts, cleaning duplicates, etc. I've found that after you've done a big cleaning it's best to keep up with the maintenance in smaller more frequent increments - the smaller the list of records that you're cleaning or deleting, the less panic you have over those changes.
We used to clean our database once a year in the summer when our programs would be closed and getting ready for the next school year. We usually look at those contacts whose emails were bounced, blocked, or suspended.
Our company has over 17,000 contacts in our database - whereas we look to do regular maintence/clean up by reviewing the mailing list, looking for bounce backs, and cross referencing our contact sheet to reach out and update contacts as needed. Additoinally, on a month-to-month basis we strive to update and add new contacts to our mailing list.
TBH I like to clean my data at the beginning of each campaign, and then monthly thereafter. But if you are using your segments and CTAs wisely, you are always gaining new knowledge and data on your contacts.
