Article

Jenna Devinney
Jenna Devinney 22 January 2020
Categories B2B, B2C, Email & eCRM, Technology

How To Keep Bad Data Out Of Your Webforms

As a marketer, nothing is more frustrating than the people who sign up using a fake name and email for free whitepapers, reports, or ebooks. We call them “content junkies”. For example, Content Spammer, CMO of ilikecontent.com: a potential title and an email domain that could cause a whole line of issues with the data in your CRMs. They receive the free content and you’re left with nothing but a bad lead, causing deliverability and sender reputation issues, lost time, and money wasted.

This is just one example of you can consume bad data through your web forms. Surprisingly a large cause of bad data is simply from user error. According to DQ Global, “typos and spelling mistakes make up to 58% of data inaccuracy issues”. No matter the cause, those content spammers are always out there filling out as many forms as possible ready to ruin your data quality.

The Cost of Unprotected Webforms 

Data lies at the heart of every business, without accurate data you can’t target your customers, which impacts not only deliverability but revenue and relationships. Here are four issues that can occur when your web forms are unprotected. 

1. Email Deliverability

If you have bad data in your CRMs your email deliverability will be one of the biggest issues that you’ll face. If the “ilikecontent.com” domain has been entered into your web forms, you’ll hit a hard bounce, but that is just the first issue. When deliverability fails, what follows is a poor open rate, click-through rate, resulting in limited purchases. 

2. Sender Reputation 

Along with poor deliverability comes a damaged sender reputation. If you’re sending to problem accounts such as spam traps, bots, moles, screamers and zombie accounts. this will ding your IP address or domain, hurt your reputation, and possibly lock you into a blacklist. To learn more information about threats that can damage your reputation, check out: What’s Hiding in Your Email.

3. Bad Decision Making 

If you’re lacking confidence in your data, the choices that are being made off of the data will take a toll as well. Think about all of the wasted marketing dollars going to the wrong areas as a result of not capturing clean data on the front end. 

4.  Impact to Sales Cycle 

A sales team only has limited hours in the day to sell.  If there is missing or incorrect information entering the pipeline it can cause a whole line of issues such as, time wasted searching for the correct information, and potential problems between marketing and sales departments.

How can you make sure your web forms are protected and filled with accurate data?

Answer: introduce a cleansing service that coordinates with your CRM, email service provider, or lead capture forms to ensure the best top-of-the-funnel-data quality. You can also schedule batch files as often as you’d like and submit them to us. 

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