Data quality issues damages a company’s revenue targets, spawns low percentage successful lead generation opportunities and erodes a marketing program and campaign efficiency.
All this translates to lost revenue and wasted resources. Among the problems generated are unhappy clients, money and time wasted, and bounced emails and returned direct mail pieces.
Not understanding or addressing data quality issues often causes marketing campaigns to be off target or just not as effective as they could be. Staff hours and budgets can be squandered because the data is bad to begin with, and the poor quality only gets compounded the further into the sales cycle the prospect travels – or not!
Data quality issues cause both marketing and sales executives and teams to get blindsided with results they weren’t expecting to see. Often, this is discovered when they have to present information on their respective programs to corporate level personnel. By this time, it’s too late to fix the bad data, and the stress that’s caused is detrimental to team performance.
Catching Data Quality Issues
To start, a good, solid set of metrics for goals and objectives needs to be established for both marketing and sales.
The marketing automation platform and the CRM system have to be analyzed and often fixed to correct data quality issues that may have been in place since initial implementation.
Good data also goes back to effective training on the software for both marketing and sales. It’s important to show the teams which data goes where, and why they are a critical part of creating successful, useful data.
It’s also important to have someone – or several people – trained in recognizing data quality issues and how to fix them. Create a process and document it in your marketing and sales programs, and walk the people through it to make sure they’re comfortable with recognizing and fixing dirty or poor data.
The cost of bad data is staggering. Lost leads, decreased revenue, bad experiences for prospects and customers can all add up to damaging a company’s bottom lead and reputation.
Measured Results Marketing understands how important it is to develop data quality control processes. Call us at 571-606-3106 to talk about what you need assistance with, or visit our services page to learn more.
High quality data makes the marketing and sales processes and campaigns work smarter and boost revenue.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
