4 Ways Dirty CRM Database Can Hurt Your Marketing Efforts

Like it or not, are you spending your marketing budget on programs that bring poor or no results at all?
Researchers have revealed that on an average 15% of a business’s annual profits are spend (read misspent) owing to bad data residing in their CRM database.

And it is not just the money that gets us worried. Dirty data in the CRM database, like duplicate information, often results in erroneous lead scoring. For when scores are shared between duplicate leads, it implies that neither of the records gets a high enough score to proceed down the sales pipeline.

Additionally, pitiable marketing results along with time wasted following up with the wrong lead drastically lower marketing and sales productivity, increase CRM’s and other marketing software costs, and finally damages the reputation of the company.

Here are 4 how dirty CRM database is hurting your marketing efforts and what you can do to fix them:

#1. Duplication

Data of the customers are gathered through several sources, which includes tradeshow lists, web forms, webinars or other third party sources.  Hence, duplicates of records end up on most marketing lists.

Cloud-based CRM system and marketing software charges are most often based on the amount of data that is stored in its database. Therefore, retaining too many duplicates in your system inflates the cost of storage. Duplicate records stored in the CRM database also skew performance reports, making it complicated to base critical business decisions on inaccurate results.

The Fix:

• Boost the performance of your system with CRM database duplication prevention tools.
• Make sure that the likely places for duplicate entry, like manual data entry and data import, are duly covered.
• Create a duplicate-free workflow for all teams in your organization, not just for marketing and sales departments in your company.

#2. Lead Scoring

There are several prospects who often use more than one email addresses or interact with your business in different ways (downloads, trail requests, email opens etc.) causing the CRM system or other marketing automation tools to create innumerable duplicates.

Duplicate entries in the CRM database affects lead scoring by:

• Score sharing between duplicate leads, whereby neither of the leads scores high enough points to qualify either of the leads.
• By treating each and every email addresses as a unique record in the CRM system, a score actually referring to the same lead can be split between two different emails of the same entity.
• Shared email addresses, when they are shared between different members of the organization, all the addresses are saved to one unique lead.

The Fix:

• Assess the quality of your CRM database and persistently track down all new duplicate records in the database.
• Be thorough in cleaning your bad data and make sure that no duplicate records are left behind on a recurring basis.

#3. Inaccuracy

It has been found that CRM data degrades at a rate of 30% per annum. Hence, remember your CRM database’s quality always changes over time.

Outdated contact information, organizational changes, errors during entry, and also external data sources affects the quality of your existing CRM database.

Bad data unnecessarily stored in the CRM database, escalates storage costs, which results in creating a devastating effect on your marketing plans. This is because; multiple communications with the same prospect or lead and wrong targeting can have a crucial effect on the reputation of your brand.

The Fix:

• Verify and then enrich all customer data.
• Verify all third party data sources before adding the contacts or other related information in the CRM database.

#4. Limited Visibility

Most businesses depend on several systems for gathering their customer data, where CRM is just one of these sources marketers use in building the customer profiles that help them in targeting.

To access the customer information across, on-premise, cloud and also third-party systems, marketers need to be capable of finding data easily and quickly, regardless of errors or differences in form (like acronyms, nicknames, or misspellings).

The Fix:

• Find a 360-degree view of your customers using a Converged CRM (like ConvergeHub) for creating more personalized campaigns resulting in better targeting of your customers.
• Integrate every customer-based data into a unique workflow.
• No matter where it resides, make data easy to be located in your sales, marketing, and support teams.

Conclusion

Are your campaign rates dropping?
Evaluate the current state of your CRM database with data quality report of your database from professional CRM data cleaning services in your city.

Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!