Using a CRM to manage customer data opens a whole world of sales and marketing opportunities.
It can be used to make things like lead generation, email marketing and reporting and forecasting more effective.
However, simply getting a CRM and using these techniques won’t guarantee their success.
Why? Because first, the data you use needs to be high quality.
A good analogy is making an apple pie.
You have apples but they are old and out of date and half of your pastry is missing. Worse still, you’ve picked up the paprika because it was where the cinnamon should have been in the spice rack.
You decide to put it in the oven anyway and unsurprisingly, your apple pie tastes awful.
Similarly, if your data is old, incomplete or mixed up you can only expect poor-quality results when you come to use it.
That’s why whenever a new customer starts using KulaHub we offer to review their data, cleanse it and provide training on how to manage it better in future.
In this article, we’re going to explain the process we go through to clean data.
The Bad Data Threat
So why is poor-quality data such an issue?
Each year at least 11% of UK businesses are dissolved. During the pandemic, this figure was probably higher.
So if you have 100 companies in your database, 11 of them will be gone within a year.
This is a major issue for companies that use customer data in their sales and marketing.
They will spend 11% of their time pursuing companies that no longer exist.
On top of that, 25% of all company data changes per year. That could mean that some sales calls fail simply because a business has changed its number, or some email campaigns bounce because people have left the business.
This wastes salespeople’s time, resources and effort and ultimately impacts their sales rate.
Mistakes, incorrect formatting, gaps and information recorded in the wrong fields all cause similar problems.
How We Cleanse Data
KulaHub uses a three-stage process to clean our clients’ data:
We essentially want to answer three main questions:
How complete is it?
- Is it missing postcodes, addresses, telephone numbers, etc.?
- Is the information outdated? Have directors left the company, has the business moved premises?
- How many errors does it have? Is the wrong information in the wrong place or formatted incorrectly?
At this stage, we can repair common errors using database management tools available to us.
However, incomplete or obsolete data requires specialist tools. This brings us to step two.
Step Two: Compare
Next, we use tools to compare the information against a database of every UK company.
This database uses publicly available sources and includes information like directors’ names and contact details, the company address, the number of employees and more.
We can use this tool to fill in any gaps or update obsolete information in our client’s database immediately.
Now the data is accurate and up to date. The next two stages are about adding value to our client’s sales and marketing.
Step Three: Build Personas
Now we look for patterns and insights in the data that our customers can use to inform their sales and marketing.
A key part of this is identifying buyer personas.
For example, we might see that 40% of the client’s customers are software companies based in London.
This is a significant proportion of the client’s customer base and businesses with these characteristics will be a key focus for its sales and marketing teams.
We tag all companies that match this buyer persona. This allows sales and marketing to easily access comprehensive lists of customer groups whenever they launch a new campaign.
Step Four: Enrich
The publicly available data that we use includes deep financial information which can be added to our clients’ CRMs.
For example, we can include information on financial performance plus any county court judgements made against a company or any other businesses it may be related to.
This can be used to enrich our clients’ customer data, giving them greater depth and accuracy in their lead generation.
For example, a firm that offers insolvency services or business restructuring might want to identify companies that are struggling financially and approach them with an offer of support.
Step Five: Maintain
The final step is to make sure your data stays tidy, accurate and up to date.
KulaHub is designed to minimise human error.
However, we can still provide full training to ensure that data is well managed.
This effectively gives them access to real-time data and ensures they are never working with out-of-date information.
Beyond Cleansing
Our data services don’t just end with cleansing.
We can also help our clients use data to predict the financial health of their prospects, allowing them to only work with healthy businesses or implement credit checks for new customers.
Whatever you want to achieve, the best way to start is to speak with one of our data experts.
We’ll take the time to understand your business and what you want to achieve with your data, before offering a solution that’s right for you.
For more information on how KulaHub can help bring your business into the data age, contact Andrew Booth at [email protected] or call 0800 049 6044.
