In an era of big data, there are copious amounts of customer information available. The trouble is, the sheer abundance of it and the lack of verification for whether the data is still current and correct reduces its value the staler it becomes. Data cleaning is the process of improving the quality of retained data by putting it through a cleansing process. There are various benefits of doing so, which we cover in this article.
Reduce Wasted Marketing Efforts
Sending out mailers and other direct mail offerings is an expensive business. The response rate is usually only a few percentage points, so the money is made back through bulk marketing.
Save on Wasted Resources
It’s useful to use data cleansing to reduce wasting resources when getting in touch with people who are never likely to be customers, or were once, but their life circumstances have since changed.
Email Data Can Be Cleansed Too
Even when marketing online, email and other records are still relevant to paint a fuller picture. This reduces a mailing list down to only people with verified email addresses. Also, it cuts email mailing list expenses because they’re usually priced per email or subscriber.To learn more about how your data can be cleansed.
Improve Customer Demographic Information
Background information about customers isn’t always available.Even having some idea about their socio-economic or demographics can help to categorise them better to see if they would be interested in a certain product or service.Using such information, it’s possible to quickly rule some customers out and not be wasteful with marketing materials or the time it takes to reach out.
Confirm Anyone on a Do Not Call Register
Some countries operate a Do Not Call register. When using phone marketing, it’s important to verify whether any customer in the dataset has since added themselves to such a list.Given that companies may want to get in touch but do not wish to fall foul of laws relating to not contacting someone who dislikes marketers, this can avoid considerable inconvenience and possible fines too.
Get Clarity Around Genuinely Contactable Customers
Believing that you have details on 80,000 customers provides some confidence that selling a new product to 10,000 of them might be possible. However, when the 80,000 is whittled steadily down to just 15,000 with a confirmed phone number, email address, or mailing address, the situation becomes quite different. Then you have a far smaller number of people to contact and many others that will likely be confirmed to have incorrect information.
Knowing this (rather than just suspecting it) allows the product creation, manufacturing, and marketing teams to all operate from a position of certainty. In the above scenario, different decisions may be made whether to go ahead with a new product, where it would be positioned in the marketplace, and how to promote it.
The older the customer records, the greater the need for data cleansing. Otherwise, the company is effectively operating in the dark.
