A Customer Relationship Management software or CRM is a quick and effective way to manage all your fruitful contacts that are liable to convert into sales at one specific place and this is what makes the CRM look different from all the other software. On the other hand, if you leave it unmanaged then it can abruptly become a giant junk of not so connected data and furthermore it will become impossible to gather beneficial information from the CRM. Most of the CRM tools today offer a wide variety of Functionality such as email performance, campaign tracking, sales management, and much more. Amidst all this, it’s important to realize that your CRM tracking and marketing performance will be effective and efficient only if the data we stored and acquired is accurate and up to date. Here are some reasons and tips as mentioned by Binary Clues if you haven't checked up on yet to clean and maintain your CRM database.
1. Adjustments in Formatting: Inconsistent or poor formatting of the data has the power to worsen its impact when you make use of personalization in your marketing and sales processes. Understanding it with an example, some names might be of lowercase, otherwise all uppercase and they might also possess extra spaces at the end of the name. These issues might appear small and minor but capitalization errors are immediately noticed by end users and web crawlers. This will let them deduce that your company lacks attention to detail.If your sales CRM allows you to export your contact database in larger numbers, then same goes for correcting any formatting issues. Using simple Excel functions, you can now adjust the formatting of all current data to be aligned and consistent.
2. Rigid redundant properties: Many CRMs are equipped with several numbers of ready to use properties or say " data fields ". The actual process tends to signify that as your organization teams start using the platform and discover data points you need to gather and require, new properties get created. The problem isn't with the all but some of them are redundant or duplicates of what was already available. This might end up with splitting of data between different properties but do remember it’s the same information but might be under a different name between contact to contact.
3. Combine Duplicate Records: Duplicate records are common in CRM and it can be caused by neglectance of basic features such as uploading a contact without using the identifiers. This will make it difficult to find the right information and hence you should merge all duplicate records as one to acquire highly valued details.
4. Removal of outdated contacts: A CRM stores all type of contacts to generate leads. If you don't clean the CRM database then the rejected, suppressed and outdated contacts will still be there, hence making it difficult to find the right contact. Therefore it is mandatory to remove such contacts.
5. Data entry modifications: If your details or content from the data goes missing, then one of the probable causes is that it wasn't maintained in the data entry sheet. Always make sure to use required properties when creating a contact and this will allow you to gather the information you want.
6. Data Cleansing Technology: Data cleansing is alone not the solution to this, but yes it can clean your CRM database manually in regular intervals of time. With the help of ZoomInfo and HubSpot cleansing, you can also automate the data cleansing process.
Conclusion: Never let your outdated, inaccurate and poor CRM data prevent your marketing and sales teams from effectively targeting leads and nurturing prospects for a business. By initiating the important steps mentioned above by Binary Clues, start optimizing your current data from today and gain better efficiency from your CRM.