Article

Alvaro Dee
Alvaro Dee 3 May 2016
Categories Data & Analytics

How to Clean Your Data to Improve Targeting and Return on Investment

How much success would you attribute to your marketing campaign that utilizes inaccurate and outdated mailing addresses, or for instance, if it targets a substantial number of teachers who have already retired, or even died?

Probably, the success rate would not be good, and so would be the ROI.

Whether the your marketing campaign is built in accordance to the target market’s profession, gender, age, demographics or any other factor, its success rate depends on data quality. This is precisely why organizations need to constantly cleanse and replenish their customer databases to not only reach out to the right set of prospects at the right address but also make informed strategic decisions quickly and efficiently.

Data cleansing, also referred to as data scrubbing, includes a detailed analysis and review of your pre-existing data for identifying incorrect, incomplete, invalid and duplicate entries, and rectifying them. It is the key to turn your valuable data into an asset that drives business success and help you connect with the right set of customers and build ever lasting relationships with them. Put simply, it involves a four-step process:

  • Data Duplication: Matching, margining and purging the organization’s customer records to ensure that no record is repeated even once

  • Data Standardization and Normalization: Standardizing and normalizing the records to ensure consistency throughout the database

  • Data Verification and Validation: Verifying the records and matching them against up-to-date sources of information to validate the details and ensure accuracy

  • Data Update: Finding missing details and adding/ updating them like company name, job titles, email addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, etc.

Data cleansing also includes carrying out thorough web research and referring to online directories to ensure that the information is accurate, complete and up-to-date. If your customer database is constantly growing and you find it difficult to update it at regular intervals, you can choose to outsource data cleansing services to specialized vendors that hold extensive experience and expertise. Some of the benefits of outsourcing data scrubbing task to experts, include:

  • Improve targeting and ROI

  • Reduce mailing costs

  • Save time, money and efforts

  • Focus on core competencies

  • Ensure legal compliance

Data cleansing service providers support right from determining incorrect contact information, rectifying them through to appending the customer records with details like date of birth, age, income marital status, etc., thereby enabling business owners to run targeted marketing campaigns and increase response rates. The records are also organized in a specific file format to ensure easy access, as and when required.

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