How to create an effective data management strategy Companies today are storing more and more data, whether that s your key account contacts, existing customer information or potential prospects it s not surprising that data accuracy is at an all-time low. To help, we have put together this quick reference guide to help you create an effective data management strategy or improve the processes you already have. Having an effective data management strategy in place will help you deliver more costeffective and productive lead and sales generation campaigns for the business. In this guide, the 5 areas we will look at in more detail are: 1. Clean your data how to improve the quality of your database and lower your marketing costs by cleaning and de-duping your data. 2. Enhance your data how to increase insight by adding additional information to the records you already have such as organisational size, propensity to buy and identifying customers who are part of the same group helping to create much more detailed customer profiles and cross-selling opportunities. 3. Analyse your data how to gain valuable insight into who and where your most profitable customers are, and where you have un tapped opportunities. 4. Get the best contacts how to select the right profile and contacts to ensure your marketing is reaching the correct audience. 5. Data-driven marketing how to identify the process you need to set up to ensure new leads entering your sales funnel are managed efficiently to maximise the conversion rate.
This guide looks at the 5 areas that are key to most organisations Data Management Strategy. The guide provides an overview; however, we understand that Data Management means different things to different people and is unique to each organisation. 1. Clean your data The latest research estimates that the average business database decays by 37% each year 1, costing UK businesses over 180m as a result of marketing to out-of-date companies. Updating your data, by correcting addresses where businesses have moved and removing businesses that have ceased trading, makes each marketing campaign more targeted and improves ROI. You can identify how much of your data has decayed by working with a data expert who can conduct a data audit and highlight the processes that are impacting your data quality. The average business database degrades by 37% each year Find a senior executive champion for data within your organisation to work with sales, marketing and IT. Allow that champion to educate and drive continuous improvements in how data is collected and maintained across your organisation Data quality is a continuous process, not a onetime event. CRM data quality degrades around 2% per month, therefore create a regular review that identifies the sources of data, where it is used within the business and what additional information is required - collect data you need, don t spend time collecting information that isn t used Understand your limits; if data management hasn t been given the time it requires, find out why - it could be a resource or a skills issue Give each record a unique identifier number within your database such as a DUNS number this reduces the likelihood of duplicate records being created and allows easy updating of your data Introduce a data governance strategy to ensure ongoing consistency Reduce error/detect rate by 3.5% Improve deliverability/connectivity by 4-5% Reduce duplicates in your database by 10-20% 1 B2B DM Trends DMIS 2
2. Enhance your data Data enhancement is the process of adding information to your existing records; segmentation details (size, turnover, Industry SIC codes) financial data credit ratings. Enhancing data can also include appending additional contact details like telephone numbers, email addresses and even social media to your records, helping you to stay in contact with customers and prospects. This rich data allows several departments to benefit. Your sales and marketing teams can have an enhanced view of customers and prospects, allowing them to identify opportunities using information that previously wasn t available or was incomplete for example, being able to segment based on employee size. Additional information gives marketers a fuller picture, allowing advanced segmenting and targeting and more relevant and targeted marketing, for example, referencing relevant facts related to the industry that an organisation is in. Data scientists or analysts and strategists have a deeper understanding of your organisation s customer or prospect base and can share business information that will enable you to make important strategic business decisions. There are tools available to streamline this process by combining the key areas of data matching, enhancing, maintenance, value creation and project management into one product that allows you to own the process of matching and appending data. Quality over quantity focus on the number of businesses that fit your customer or prospect profile and how you can most effectively market to them Data changes 62% of business contact information will change within a year. Have a regular review and update programme Rank customers or prospects from most to least likely to respond/purchase/defect, screen out risky customers/prospects and market to them separately Identify the source of your data website, advertising, email campaign, trade show etc. Typically your enquiry will appreciate the same format of communication as they used in their initial enquiry - if it was email, send an email; if it was face-to-face, organise a meeting to discuss it further Compare your database against that of a professional organisation such as Dun and Bradstreet. This will enable you to benchmark what you have against the total size of your audience Increase customer retention by 4-5% Reduce data enhancement from 10-12 business days to 1 3
3. Analyse your data It s common knowledge that we are living in an era of a data explosion. The real value of this mass of data is only when you can turn this data into valuable insight. You can do this by analysing the data you have to help you to uncover hidden business opportunities, identify key relationships and improve your decision-making. Use tools to allow you to rank potential prospects according to propensity to buy or fit with your organisation. This enables you to avoid costly marketing campaigns to businesses that are unlikely to require your products or services so that you can focus on the ones that are. Understand the system where your data resides can it provide the insight that is needed? Does it link with all areas of the business if not conduct a review of product or services that can How much time/effort is going into your key accounts, are they profitable? Use predictive analytics model to identify high yield customers/prospects, focus on these over high quality but low profit customers Compare your data against industry averages using a data expert, analyse your data and benchmark against the market Increase up-sell/cross-sell opportunities by 2-3% Increase win rate by 2-3% 4. Get the best contacts Best practice organisations establish a data brief, to identify your objectives and who your target audience needs to be. Examples of this could include businesses within a specific industry sector, geographical location or even a specific job role. Having relevant contacts could help improve the effectiveness of your marketing. In order to obtain the best quality data, use a reputable data provider, who has a large database which has been qualified to only include trading organisations as well as having contact data suitable for direct marketing. With a UK database of over 2.8 million qualified, actively trading companies and over 4.9 million B2B contacts, D&B can help you market your business to new prospects. Find a reputable source of high quality data that is relevant to your specific industry and build a relationship. A good provider should understand your specific elements and the challenges you face Get the best contacts possible, whether that is through improving your collection methods at exhibitions or enquiries through your website Continuous data accuracy human error is inevitable, have a process for checking what has been created against what is known to be correct, preferably before the information has even entered your systems Don t wait if purchased or licensed data has been used and it s incorrect, engage with the source; they should be willing to review and replace anything that s not correct Understand how you use data external data may have licence agreements about its use, understand what you are legally allowed to do with it Shorten sales cycle time by at least 10% 4
5. Data-driven marketing To create a seamless approach across all your platforms such as your CRM, ERP and Marketing Automation Systems you will need good quality data that integrates. This will help to make business decisions and run efficient marketing programmes. In order to do this effectively you need to start by ensuring you have a single view of your customers (SCV) and prospects. You can do this by assigning each record a unique identifier such as a DUNS number (a unique nine-digit sequence recognised as the universal standard for identifying businesses). This can then integrate into your systems, allowing you to begin efficient end-to-end marketing that is driven through the information you identify from your data. Understand what your marketing team classifies as a lead, then repeat the exercise with sales the two very rarely match but try to find common ground and work on a continuous review process that brings the two together Next steps I understand this is a lot to take in, and that this guide will not have answered all of your questions. Because of this I will ask one of the team to drop you a line in a few days to discuss any areas of your data management strategy you d like to focus on. We can then set up a simple review to discuss any questions you have. Alternatively, to fast-track the process, simply drop me an email using the link below and one of the team will be in touch. Contact me Many thanks for your time. Dave Brown Customer Support Ensure you have access to real-time information it will allow you to create better relevant campaigns Personalise your campaign as much as possible and talk about industry issues rather than product understanding your customer s corporate structure can open up new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities once they are engaged Understand who has access to your data and what they are doing with it individual user names and passwords will allow you to identify who is sending what Deliver a relevant, compelling message that resonates with the right contact rather than bulk mailing everyone, it will improve your response rates and boost your ROI Business Impact Reduce vendor costs by 10-20% Reduce data disparity across systems by 10% 5