Database or data beast?

As marketers a key asset is our contacts database.  You know, the list.  The collection of names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and if you are lucky browsing history that is pulled from when building a target list for a new campaign.  The item that you have purchased or built over years of promoting products and services.  But when was the last time that database was evaluated for its overall health?  When was the last time old contacts were removed or email addresses validated?  The question is, are you using a database or are you being used and abused by a data beast?  Are you wasting time and money by marketing to errors in your system?  If so, how do you tame the beast?

Think about these points:

• Start with good data.  If data that enters your system is bad from the beginning, it is worse than no data.  Very soon after the bad data is identified it must be corrected or deleted costing time and money.
• Build an Input Editing Standards (IES) document that outlines how all forms and data input methodologies will be undertaken or built.  This standards document will let everyone know the data format for items like state abbreviations and if the first name or last name appears first in a sequence.
• Determine who owns the data (Eloqua, 2013).  Without an owner how can data relevance and value be established.  Different departments will have different metrics they wish to gather so assign owners and hold them accountable for data management (not database management).
• Identify the fields that are required information.  Not just fields that are required to submit the form but fields for content that is valuable to your business.
• Determine that 100% of the fields on the form will be completed before the form is submitted.  This leads to the necessity of great form design.  If you have a form with 20 required fields, you will have a very high dropout rate.  Find the optimal form field total (I suggest between 4 and 6) and then rely on other tracking and marketing components for additional data.
• If your database is populated by data from an email registration form, more than 20% of those registrations contain typos, syntax, domain, and various other errors (Karr, 2013).  That 20% is for honest mistakes and doesn’t include the SPAM or intentionally deceptive registrations. 
• Duplication in data.  Duplicate data costs twice as much.  In actuality duplicate records can end up costing you more because people receiving duplicate messages may be more likely to unsubscribe from mailing lists.    Be sure to purge any duplicate records.
• Data augmentation is good.  As a user interacts with your online data, append this activity to their user account.  It helps build more detail around what they are looking for and will help you build a more accurate marketing message.  This extra data is database space well spent.
• Database management should not be a once a year special project.  Make database care and nurturing an ongoing project.  It should be reviewed before any major campaign launch.
• Monitor the hard bounce lists.  Get rid of these contacts unless review of the contact information reveals an easily fixed error (Eloqua, 2013).
• Analyze for junk contacts like Disney@world.com or me@email.com.  Fake data is everywhere so be on the lookout.  There are automated tools that can help identify these fake contacts (Eloqua, 2013).
• Automation is good.  Services like DataValidation, BriteVerify, and eHygienics all help maintain a healthy database systematically (Karr, 2013).
• Are you segmenting your data properly or just clumping into mega silos?  Cat litter is about the only good thing to automatically clump.  For database management, segment members into groups with shared attributes so messaging and targeting is more accurate.  When databases are highly segmented, it is easier to spot data that doesn’t belong.
• Perform a competitive analysis.  Look for database records when competitors have registered and remove them.  Don’t make their job easier than necessary(Eloqua, 2013).
• Create and enforce a list of countries that have been identified as non-targets or areas where you do not want to do business (Eloqua, 2013).
• Consider segmenting out internal employees and vendors.  Add them to a separate list or communicate with them through a separate channel to keep your marketing list as clean as possible (Eloqua, 2013).

So that’s a pretty long list of points to consider.  But it is all about gathering the right data and keeping the data you collect valid and clean.  If you keep the database under control and keep it clean, it will be one of your greatest and most valuable assets.  If not, you will have a big, nasty, hairy beast just waiting to wreak havoc on your next campaign.

Resources:

Eloqua. (2013). Targeting [That’s on target]. Retrieved March 3, 2014 from https://app.box.com/s/wn6vin8ljhu2aa1wqvxz/1/1340484184/11980127562/1

Karr, D. (2013). Why and How to Verify Your Email Marketing Lists. Retrieved March 1, 2014 from http://socialmediatoday.com/douglaskarr/1719851/why-and-how-verify-your-email-marketing-lists