Jul 11, 20217:39 AM - edited Jul 11, 20217:40 AM
HubSpot Employee
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.
We try to vet & clean the contacts as they come in to ensure we're only logging those who have potential for us. We also look yearly at the existing database to get rid of people who haven't engaged in that time
For the purposes of marketing, high-quality leads are generally best to keep as clean as possible. Would recommend every 6 months, and less for lower quality leads. Of course, it depends on the needs of your business.
We audit and clean the DB every quarter (as recommended by HubSpot). To keep on top of it has many benefits. If contacts have not engaged with us for more than a year and lead score is not progressing they will be put on a sepate list. They might have moved to a different company, just retired or we need to create another product they were actually looking for. Usually we de-duplicate contacts, we purge contacts that hard bounced twice (DNS record), we get rid of datafields that are no longer relevant, we update phone numbers, etc. It costs less time when you do this once every quarter. From time to time we use a data management integration to automate this process.
It depends on what kind of business you have and what your event schedules are. If your a team that runs camaigns consistently every week, then the lists should be updated at least weekly. Or if you have a client that is primarily targeting holiday shoppers - then you could get away with updating that information once a year.
We constantly manage the database. Every week we check the consistency of the information, every quarter we clean up contacts that are already out of date. Every time an email is sent, all the hard bounces because the email no longer exists, the person no longer works for that company, are also cleared. And in order to safeguard all this information, all these contacts are exported to a specific document.
We constantly manage the database. Every week we check the consistency of the information, every quarter we clean up contacts that are already out of date. Every time an email is sent, all the hard bounces because the email no longer exists, the person no longer works for that company, are also cleared. And in order to safeguard all this information, all these contacts are exported to a specific document.
I agree with HubSpot's suggestion that it be once every quarter. I think a lot of companies do clean up each quarter - whether it's inventory, or evaluations of any other kind. I also think this depends on the size of the company and the neatness (or lack there of) of the contacts database.
Cleaning contacts database regularly is a great practice to maintain data accuracy and relevance. It's recommended to clean contacts at least once every quarter or every six months. By removing duplicate or outdated contacts and updating any changes, you can ensure that your database remains up-to-date and effective.
🙂 With us common frequencies include monthly, quarterly, or yearly, depending on the size and dynamics of the database. The process often involves identifying and correcting inconsistencies, removing duplicates, and updating outdated information.
Once a year we do a purge .. a thourough efforts involves a lot of consensus across sales and marekting. But I think there is a faster way to only purge marketing contacts, etc .
We sell high-ticket items that can have purchase cycles that last over a year. Some customers research heavily and can take a long time to purchase. 18-24 months.
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