The importance of data cleansing

When it comes to sales and marketing, data cleansing is one of the most fundamental elements for success. The quality of the data you have can massively impact your business and more importantly your profits. It makes complete sense that you want that impact to be a positive one which means that data cleansing has to be part of your sales and marketing set up. No matter what kind of marketing campaigns you run, the data you use has to be correct otherwise you could find yourself wasting both your time and your money.

Email marketing is one of the cheapest marketing tools you can utilise. However, you need to be sure that you are emailing active accounts. The great thing about email marketing is that its effectiveness is measurable so if there is an issue with the quality of your data then you should know fairly instantly. However, removing email addresses or updating your email address list is crucial to get your offer emails through to potential and existing customers. Data cleansing will prevent;

  • Duplicate email addresses
  • Bounce backs due to incorrect or inactive email addresses
  • Spelling mistakes in emails
  • Email addresses for the wrong contact

Often customers may request to be removed from a mailing list or they may request an email address to be updated so you need to ensure your team are carrying out data cleansing at all times.

Telemarketing is a little more complicated. Ineffective or out of date data that has not been cleansed can cause your business a range of issues from damaging a reputation to increased complaints from customers. It is good housekeeping and proactive data cleansing to have your telemarketing team confirm a customer’s details each and every time they speak with them. This should ensure that your data stays current and up to date.

There are also various pieces of software that you can use when it comes to data cleansing that will benefit your business greatly. However, training your team to be proactive in confirming data can be one of the best ways to ensure you have the highest quality data. You must ensure your team understand the purpose of doing this as often employees can be fairly relaxed when it comes to confirming data. Not only could out of date data make your sales and marketing ineffective but it could also increase customer service issues due to orders going to wrong addresses. So if you value your business then you need to invest time in data cleansing.