If you have large records of customer data then you will probably not be a stranger to the idea of data cleansing. However, although many companies know that it is important to keep their data accurate and up to date, many fail to carry out regular data cleansing effectively, seeing it as an unnecessary expense. However, data cleansing is often more important than many companies realise, and here are a few of the main reasons why.
1. Improve Marketing Response Rates
If you get a contact’s name wrong, they are a lot less likely to respond to your marketing materials, wasting you time and money. If you get their gender wrong, they will be even less likely to respond, and if you get their address wrong you will never even reach them. Cleansing your data to improve its accuracy can lead to much more focused marketing campaigns.
2. Avoid Harming Your Company Image
By sending marketing materials out to people with the wrong details, you make yourself look unprofessional. Not only that, but it makes your customers feel like you don’t care about them, and this can seriously harm your response rates. You need to get the details right to make it look like you actually care whether they respond or not and to avoid sending things to people who don’t want to receive them.
3. Get a Better Insight into Customers
Correct data allows you to get a better understanding of your customers. If you have faulty data and duplicate records you won’t get a true insight into your customers, and this is where data cleansing becomes essential because you can add a lot more value to your marketing activities.
4. Make Budgets Go Further
Budgets are tight for many companies at the moment, so it makes sense to avoid spending money where you can, which includes the storing of inaccurate data. In addition, you can improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and get a better return on investment, helping your marketing budget to go a lot further.
5. Avoid Non-Compliance
The Data Protection Act has set strict standards on the storing of personal data, and if your data contains personal information of your clients, you may end up receiving large fines if it is not accurate. You should therefore do all that is necessary to keep the data accurate to avoid any problems in the future.
Make the Effort to Consistently Cleanse Your Data
It is hard work to cleanse data efficiently, and it can be a very labour-intensive process. However, it is essential to improving your company image, boosting your marketing response rates and avoiding issues with fines when it comes to the storage of personal data. It requires a consistent effort to keep your data clean, and that is why many companies decide to hire a specialist to cleanse their data instead as this can end up saving a lot of time and money in the long term, so this may be something that you want to consider.
