Incorrect data can be detrimental to your CRM and your business. Remember, CRM is essential for efficiently managing your clients and for your marketing staff to accomplish their work. So, if the data is lacking in some manner, it won’t be very useful.

Targeted and opportunistic marketing is the key to success. It’s all about engaging with your prospects at the appropriate moment with the correct content. To get there, you must properly utilize your client data.

While CRM data isn’t the only tool you should use to make better marketing decisions, its importance cannot be overstated. It’s one thing to recognize that faulty data is bad for a company; it’s another to understand why it’s terrible.

But, when can you say it is bad data?

A precise definition of “bad data” is difficult to come up with. The technical definition of “missing values” includes corrupt records and incompatible file formats. Sure, faulty data is a part of it, but there’s so much more than that.

It may contain inaccurate information that wastes your time, causes you to be late at work, and causes brilliant ideas to vanish. High bounce rates, squandered phone calls, and perplexing conversations are all consequences of bad data. Regrettably, it has an impact on every industry, company, and department.

No one is exempted from cybersecurity threats. If bad data isn’t identified and fixed as soon as possible, serious problems might arise. Few people realize the serious ramifications of disregarding faulty data, and even fewer take proactive measures to address and treat its origins.

This takes you to the root causes of inaccurate data which may include the following:

1. Emails that are invalid or undeliverable

Invalid emails can enter the system when clients input the wrong contact information, either purposefully or unwittingly, or when salespersons make mistakes when putting data into CRM. When you fill out forms on your website, go to events where people’s data is collected, or work with an untrustworthy data partner, breaches can happen.

2. Addresses that are disposable or temporary

Many decision-makers are wary of disclosing their contact information. Some people create temporary or disposable addresses in order to receive important marketing materials or attend a conference. People can use these email addresses to download gated information or to urge a gatekeeper to submit these addresses for unsolicited sales calls.

3. Data degradation

Every year, data decays by more than 30% on average. Your decision-maker could be promoted, receive a new phone number, or relocate to a different company. It’s a never-ending struggle to keep your data up-to-date.

4. Addresses that are based on a person’s role

When internal research teams and data providers are unable to find personal contact information through scraping websites for publicly available data, generic, role-based email addresses may be used. To manage an organization’s general queries, generic emails are employed. The person who handles the address is unlikely to be the one who makes the decision.

Even if they are, an email sent to their role-based email address is unlikely to receive a response.

5. Data duplication

Duplicate data might degrade the customer experience. It’s possible that you’ll send the same email campaign to duplicate records twice, suggesting a lack of attention to detail and making you appear spammy. Duplicates can affect reporting as well.

Multiple salesmen may call the same consumer or, worse yet, work on the same account simultaneously.

Poor data can result in missed opportunities

It is very true! Below are some of them.

Influence on the return on investment for email marketing

Email marketing is unavoidable in the B2B environment. Remember, the more precise your data is, the more precise your communications can be. On the other hand, missing out on important information that might drive your content strategy can lead to easily avoidable mistakes like non-conversion-friendly emails.

If you’re dealing with inaccurate CRM data, you won’t be able to effectively capture where your prospects are in the buyer’s journey or what actions they’re taking on your site, both of which are crucial elements in how you nurture them in your emails. So, what’s the outcome? The best-case scenario is emails that do not convert and, as a result, do not move you closer to a sale. This may damage your domain’s reputation and face major email deliverability concerns.

It may result in some revenue losses

All of your efforts are geared around making money for your information security firm. Bad data leads to revenue loss by negatively affecting your sales funnel. Communications with leads may fail to convert due to incorrect client contact information.

It’s possible that your organization is chasing prospects based on outdated information, resulting in a major loss of business potential. For many firms, realizing the full impact of erroneous data on their operations can be frightening. Bad data can impact sales, marketing, customer service, retention, and practically every other aspect of your business.

Potential customers go unnoticed

Nobody wants to be restricted to the leads that come to them. You are constantly attempting to reach out to additional potential customers. By looking at your CRM data, you may obtain a better understanding of who your customers are, what their pain points are, and what they’re searching for in a product or service solution.

As a result, you’ll be able to approach and market to new prospects more effectively. There will be a substantial divergence between the data informing your lead nurturing and outreach if your CRM isn’t giving you reliable data about your prospects.

So, how can you improve the quality of your data?

You’ve invested countless hours and dollars into developing a customer relationship management system to keep your database structured and your sales and marketing teams on the same page. However, more than a centralized location to manage contacts and accounts will be necessary to enhance sales. Until you have high-quality data in your CRM, your salespeople and marketers will never realize the full value of your investment or reach their full potential as a team.

However, in order to get the most out of your CRM, you must follow some fundamental guidelines to ensure that the data is accurate, that you can get the right insights from your data, and that your data quality plan is continually improved. We recommend that you concentrate on the following:

Its Uniqueness

Do you have data in your CRM that is duplicated? If you don’t have methods in place to combine and eliminate duplicate data entries, or better yet, to prevent them from forming in the first place, finding the information that customers seek can be exceedingly difficult. Worse, it can sabotage automation by syncing or merging fields from incorrect records or sending out redundant communications.

At the same time, randomly eliminating duplicates can lead to data loss because the information you need may be spread over multiple duplicate records.

Its Timeliness

Is every piece of information you have up to date? In most circumstances, timely data refers to ensuring that your CRM’s data is accessible at all times. After all, what good is keeping track of data if it doesn’t help you take the action?

Regularly organizing and clearing your CRM data is critical to keeping it accurate, relevant, and current.

Its Completeness

Are you sure you have all you need for each of your files? Incomplete data is common, particularly in the early stages of a project, such as prospecting. However, omitting critical data on a frequent basis could be a serious problem. It’s crucial to figure out which functions require certain types of data and then establish processes to collect the data your team needs to do their duties well.

Its Accuracy

The data must be correct. There’s no reason to believe in your segmentation or outreach if this isn’t the case. Untrustworthy data creates a vicious cycle. The less representatives believe the data, the less they will rely on it, and the less likely they will update and maintain it, further reducing the credibility of the data and perpetuating the loop.

To ensure that your CRM data is accurate from the start, you must create processes for validating, inputting, and updating it. Because data can never be 100 percent reliable and is always decaying, data hygiene is based on company culture.

Its Consistency

Is your CRM system’s data consistent? Do you use the same format for all of your email addresses and phone numbers, for example? Is there a standardized method for assessing consumer and opportunity ratings?

Is all of your data in the correct fields? Data inconsistency becomes a challenge when data is gathered from many sources. Keep your data in one place and try to get it from as few sources as possible.

Tips for improving CRM data

Don’t worry, poor data can still be avoided. There are few pointers that will assist you in making sure the data you’re using is accurate and current. Even if you’re confident in your present data, it’s still a good idea to follow these guidelines. In the end, you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble.

• Connect your CRM to other applications. It doesn’t have to be a tremendous hassle to maintain solid CRM data. If you combine your CRM with other platforms, you’ll get automatic input, which will help you strengthen and keep your data.
• Conduct an audit. If you haven’t recently audited your CRM data, now is the moment. Better yet, set up a regular auditing process and try to get rid of bad data as quickly as possible.
• Keep as much information as possible. A lack of data can be just as damaging as inaccurate data. Keep as much consumer information as possible because you never know when you’ll need it.
• You should keep updating as you go. You’re more likely to overlook something vital if you wait too long to update CRM data. As soon as you have access to new information on your prospects, update it. You’ll know your data is as accurate as possible this way.

Bottom Line

Don’t let faulty CRM data suffocate your sales, marketing efforts, capacity to nurture prospects, and, eventually, your company. If you follow the advice above, you’ll be able to stay on top of the problem and notice inconsistencies before they become bigger problems.

Martin Gessner

Martin Gessner is the Founder of Focus on Force.

He has spent over 10 years working in various Salesforce roles including business analyst, project manager, consultant and solutions architect. Along the way he has earned twelve certifications, published "The Salesforce Career Playbook", and helps Salesforce professionals learn more about Salesforce, develop their career and prepare for certifications.