Data quality validation is the lifeblood of any successful marketing campaign. Think about it, without clean data, you doom your marketing campaign before you even start. From bounce back emails, to outdated contact information, to incomplete records, all of these are data quality items that you can and should avoid. But how? Here are the top 3 steps your business should take to ensure data quality validation.
Form Analysis
Start by evaluating the forms on your website. The marketing automation tool that your business uses to collect leads should have the ability to require certain fields as well as check to see if a field is valid. For example if a user enters an email address but forgets the @ sign or misspells .com as .con, they should receive an error message that their email is not valid. Or if your form requests a phone #, this field should indicate formatting (with or without dashes) as well as recognize that validate whether they've included 10 numbers. These simple tweaks will allow you to better manage and segment your data.
Create Business Processes For Data Quality
What technology do you use currently to manage your workflow process? What are its limits? Taking a deeper dive into the technology tools that you are using is important. Fully understanding the platform’s capabilities and the benefits that data quality validation offers to the buyer’s process is important.
Create a solid process for all data entry. Typically it’s easiest to control the online entry points, and is a good place to start. By placing parameters around your forms, you can control the data that enters into the system. But, what about leads that are manually entered? Those people that call in and speak with a rep - are all they entering all the necessary contact fields? If not, trainings might be in order. The same goes for events. What systems or procedures are in place for collecting leads at a booth? The process should be clear, define responsibilities, and ideally be the same across the board, regardless of how the lead enters the funnel.
Engage Employees
To make the process work, employees must be engaged. And that goes from the top execs all the way down the line. Implementing a comprehensive data quality validation program needs to be recognized as a required element of everyone’s job. Proactively taking steps to improve data will ultimately result in an increased bottom line. Developing programs to educate the employees on the importance of quality data, sharing how this data drives decisions, and the impact validating the data has on the business will aid in improving the process and the end results.
Do you have questions on how your business could improve data quality validation? The Yetis at Measured Results Marketing want to talk with you. Send us an email or give us a call at 571-606-3106.
