Modern marketing technology performs amazing feats. You’ve seen it in action every time you buy something from Amazon and see a list of related items for sale that are a perfect match for your interests. You know about it from special offers that arrive in your email in-box just as you’re considering an upgrade to your computer. You encounter it in a different form when using Google and its sophisticated predictive-text capabilities that almost seem to know what you’re looking for before you do. Data enhancement has revolutionized how we do business.
What happens, though, when an ungainly chunk of invalid data enters this elegant flow of information? Suddenly, you see offers that have nothing to do with you. Email arrives with misspelled names or outdated job titles. Content that isn’t relevant to you appears in banner ads. You might even see introductory offers when you’ve been a customer for years or get subscription renewal requests before you’ve gotten your first month’s newsletter.
All the bells and whistles of customer care won’t help you much if you neglect the basics of proper data collection and management. Practicing good data hygiene can mean the difference between mediocre lead gen with high churn rates and sustainable, long-term growth. Here’s why:
- It’s easier to get attention than to keep it. Your competition knows this too, and they’re working hard to be the loudest voice in the room. It’s imperative, then, for your voice to be the one most worth listening to, which only happens when what you say is relevant and useful to your intended audience. While the competition’s wasting time blasting their whole business mailing list with hit-or-miss offers, you have the opportunity to send highly customized content to leads who feel you know them.
- Traffic only matters when it translates into sales. This fundamental tenet of marketing is often lost in the scramble to boost traffic numbers higher without paying attention to data quality. Getting a million hits in a month is meaningless unless some of them choose to stay and buy.
- Customers expect more. Marketers aren’t the only people who know the value of data; your leads know their information is worth something too. If businesses collect data and fail to provide something worth their leads’ time and attention, prospects may feel they’ve been paid with false coin. Data enhancement that fills in the blanks in customer records so you can achieve greater relevance with your content and personalize it more effectively goes the extra mile that leads now demand.
- Relationships don’t end with a sale, especially for B2B marketers. Your data has to evolve to meet the changing needs of your leads as they become new buyers and progress to loyal customers. People marry, move, get promotions, and do any number of other things that can change the data you have on file for them. With data verification and data enhancement, you’re able to keep up and meet the needs of your customers no matter where they are in their buying journey.
With improper data hygiene, you run the risk of giving the impression to promising leads and loyal customers that you aren’t getting to know them despite the effort they invest in learning about you. Make sure your leads feel valued with data enhancement that helps you know who they truly are.
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