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.

[GSingh86]

Should start doing this Quarterly

[APHCS]

Currently, we usually clean up 2x a year. I think this time around, it would be more frequent now that we are using Hubspot. 

[SanjidSSM]

It's recommended to regularly clean your contact database at least once a year, or more often if your data changes frequently. This helps keep the information accurate and up-to-date, ensuring better communication and more effective marketing efforts. Additionally, removing outdated or invalid contacts can improve the overall performance and organization of your database.

[KeirMaher]

It depends on the type of list and the sales cycle involved. As a general rule I perform a more thorough list hygiene quarterly, every 3 months or so. For more or dynamic lists, I audit those at the point of use to ensure the data is relevant and the necassry rules are set.

[nippergs]

Not nearly often enough. About once a year, but now that we're moving to Hubspot, we're looking forward to stronger automation and processes that will help us with this integral piece.

[EWilson38]

It really depends on the list. For dynamic lists, I audit those regularly at the point of use to make sure filters to set rules still apply. I perform a more thorough list hygiene quarterly, every 3 months or so.

[briimcc01]

Depending on the list, it can be as often as weekly or as long as yearly. For example, prospective leads change lifecycles quickly, so they'll need to be updated at least on a weekly basis in the CRM (by the agent, their status should be updated immediately once it changes though). For past clients, this can be looked at every 6 months-1 year.  It truly all depends on how big your database it, the lifecycle, etc. 

[myathazinhan]

In our organization, there is some scheduling method to check whether the users are active or inactive bi-annualy (every 6 months). When the user cannot contact or does not response at all, we have to remove that user and changed status to "inactive" then send to backup data. 

[mrcanty]

On of the best ways we have found to continually maintain our database is to use lists that account for common scenarios that would lead to use removing a lead from the system. We do this for both Companies and Contacts and then have workflows that mark a custom field on both records as a deletion candidate. 

As an example, when we have an account in our system that has not had an activity registered in 6+ month, we mark both the account and the contacts associated to the account as deletion candidates. 

These get reviewed on a minimum of a quarterly basis

[RavenWorksATL]

I'm not sure my team has had a formalized system. We just have workflows that set our contacts to non-marketing. Initially, I want to create a secondary list for every list we have and name it as the "INACTIVE" version of the existing list. Both of these would be active lists that customers can move between during their inactive and re-engaged stages. Later, I would like to clean our list 1x quarter. 

[SVirtue]

We are just develoing our CRM for a Faculty at a university, but I've made a note that we should review every term (every four months) which will work well with the university calendar.

[lanaphuong]

In my company, we continue to contact customers for 2-3 months to give them different choices, then if they are still not interested, we will list them as bad contacts. So we will clear contacts in quarterly

[bridgetalexys]

Once a month, it helps me to keep organized, focused, and to make sure I am not trailing far behind from my contacts. 

[Poker]

The frequency of cleaning can vary depending on the size and usage of the database.

[ASolomon1]

Quarterly or where necessary

[MMcNaughton]

Not as frequently as I like. One of the aspects that is super time consuming is updating contacts within a company as the retail industry we serve has high turnover.   I wish there were a way to integrate a plug in to update when someone in the CRM changes their title on LinkedIn. Currently I have to do that manually or our outreach and our reporitng of MQLs and KPIs related to engagement and conversion are not correct.  Does anyone know of an automated way to do this?  

[JHacker]

I like cleaning databases based on how it's structured. I personally like having my top 5-10 percent as a focus and then everything else accordingly. Based on that, the top 5-10% would be biweekly, while prospecting clients or those close to converting monthly, and then those that are either completed or on a touch-base campaign quarterly. Truly depends on how you strucure your database and your sphere!

[kelvinoyibo]

Quarterly works all the time to reduce ineligble and spam contacts

[Briannapri]

It depends on how many contacts are generated during each period.

[MReuter]

We should be making contact with our customers every 3-6 months & checking in on their satisfaction, needs & wants.