Marketing Database Optimization Best Practices
ReadyContacts is a marketing database optimization company. ReadyContacts solutions help you build & maintain a highly accurate and relevant marketing database that delivers significantly improved campaign response rates for sales & marketing. ReadyContacts is the only player in the market with proprietary software solutions to build unparalleled accuracy and completeness in marketing databases.
How Well Do You Know Your CRM System
Our motto at ReadyContacts is to make every marketing manager proud of their CRM database. We want you to have relevant, accurate and complete contact and company information in you database at all times. The first and foremost to get there though to be in the know of every aspect, activity and count in your CRM database. In my past 5 years of working with 100s of companies, I have come across 5 marketers who had all the numbers at their finger tips. The others did not because its just not easy and unless there is a system and process in place to ensure it, its just not possible. Here are some of the things we think are critical to know about your CRM system at all times:
- What is the total number of contacts in your database?
- What is the total number of contacts with complete contact information including email addreses?
- How many contacts are missing email addresses?
- How many contacts are missing phone numbers?
- How many contacts have bounced emails in the last 6 months?
- How many contacts are missing title/role information?
- How many contacts are being added on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?
- Repeat the same questions for leads as well if you track those separately like in Salesforce.com.
- How many companies are missing full address information?
- How many comapnies for you have for each of the sales person’s geography?
- How many companies are missing contacts or leads altogether?
- How many companies / contacts have not be touched in the last 30, 60, 90 days?
- What is your criterion for REMOVING data from your CRM database?
- What is the main source of bad or incomplete data coming into your CRM system?
All it takes is for your to build a dashboard that gives you these numbers everyday – nothing fancy but just a table with these numbers. It will help you immensely as you plan your list building, account profiling and CRM data enrichment initiatives.
December 12th, 2008 at 7:59 am
These may be good questions for marketing to ask about their CRM system but the real questions everyone should be asking about their CRM/SFA system are:
1. What deals has my CRM system helped my sales people close that they wouldn't have closed anyway?
2. How has my CRM reduced my cost of sales?
3. How has my CRM helped my sales people find new opportunities?
4. How has my CRM helped me shorten my sales process?
5. Are the forecasts generated by my CRM accurate enough to take to a board meeting or do they require intensive rework to get right?
Find the answer to these five questions and the answers to the questions in this post fall into place.
December 13th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Ken, I agree. However, the focus on my post was mainly on the quality of data in the CRM system, how to monitor it and how to ensure its good/clean/complete which in turn drives the results which you highlight in your questions. The 5 questions you mention are the goal – the data is the means to it and keep the data clean may be the first step in reaching the goal.
January 31st, 2009 at 3:29 pm
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January 31st, 2009 at 11:29 pm
nice article! nice site. you’re in my rss feed now
keep it up
August 8th, 2011 at 3:43 am
Hi there, thank you really much for this post. I am interested in the design you are using. Could you send me an email?