How often do you clean your contacts database?

[JorieMunroe]

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.

[JulzDuncan]

It seems like this has been an afterthought (or non-thought) at our company. We have decades of data that hasn't been cleaned. Now that we have Hubspot, I can see the value in doing it consistently. Whether that's quarterly, biannually, or annually will depend on database size. For an extremely large database like ours with so many campaigns running, annually could be overwhelming, so doing it quarterly might be more realistic.

[AbdullaMuj]

HI, the contact database should be cleaned and updated regularly, but in real life mostly it is done when some issue arises. 

[FGordon0]

In reality, any business that doesn't have a dedicated compliance officer tasked with doing this is only ever going to do this when time permits, and although it's not the right way to think, in my experience it's something that only ever happens when an issue arrises, or business demands are quiet and people have time to do the non-urgent tasks. I've worked in businessesd with dreadful data, yet it was still never a priority to clean it when compared to direct sales, operations and marketing activity. Businesses should make one person accountable for this in a dedicated role or outsource the function to a third party if they want to stay on top of the matter.

[MVersavel]

this woulf depend on your database and how much information you have, could be yearly, every two years etc...

[PreethamUdaya]

As per campaign requirement.

[YoelBA-GDS]

 As part of a quarterly review, we do  CRM Contact/Company review. Specifically, this is done AFTER the quarterly ICP/Persona review as we often update relevant Contacts with new values agreed upon at these meetings.

[chattayil]

I recommend the companies to review their customer base on each quaters .Further It also depends on the market flexiblity and size of the goal.Making sure approaching the customer with a best experience in all ways.

[KentX]

Every 6 months or after finishing a 6 months drip campaign 

[AAlabi0]

Depending on the size of your database. But cleaning quaterly should be ideal for most companies.

[MKristoff80]

We clean our database frequently to ensure the integrity of our data stays in tack.

[SLarranaga]

Don't know what going on

[BAmbriz]

I'm not yet an expert on the subject but I agree with most of the answers. Quarterly

[NourhanFarid]

almost every quarter 

[SAjmera]

in every 2 months 

[AHeard]

Quarterly

[EvetteMeyer]

Every month

[IAkahome]

As a data analyst, based on previous experience, I'd say yearly as a piece of dormant information can become a lead. 

[NMatus]

Quarterly

[VPruitt]

quarterly

[JE3]

I'm new to contact management, so would take the advice of the experts: quarterly.

[DWilson90]

I think it's wise to clean/update data gradually and en masse every quarter. Things should be taken away and added to a companies data, as per instance. Once, every quarter should there be a general cleaning of unused/misappropriated data.