What exactly is data hygiene and why is it important to creators
In business, data reigns supreme.
With the high stakes that are dependent to data it's easy to see why clean, good information is vital to your business's growth. Inaccurate data - often referred to as dirty data can lead to unsuccessful business efforts.
There's hope! - Data hygiene.
In this piece this article, we'll look at how data is stored, what hygiene is and the reasons why it's crucial. Additionally, you'll learn about the best data hygiene techniques to keep your data clean and your company thriving.
What kind of databases can store data?
- Contact information
- Demographic information
- Email marketing engagement
- Past purchases of your products or products or
- Information on their needs relevant to your offerings and services
Bigger companies can utilize a more extensive analytical and business intelligence database for accessing even more data points about their business. A clothing retailer would record their sales by SKU of the product and an airline could have data on their flights, or a software-as-a service firm would collect data on how customers utilize various features of their software. Sometimes, this data gets granular, and there are whole departments at big companies who manage databases and analyse the data.
Data hygiene is equally important in both cases. Since we're looking at creators in this blog so we'll be focusing on data collected through the CRM.
What exactly is data hygiene?
Cleanliness of data is the collective and ongoing process of ensuring the cleanliness of information. It means that you're taking care in order to make sure it's reliable, consistent, and reliable. The cleaning of data helps prevent businesses such as your own from struggling with issues created by dirtier information.
But, what exactly do you mean by dirty data? Data is deemed dirty when it shows one or more of the following features:
- Information that is duplicated
- Incomplete (think missing contact fields)
- Invalide
- Incorrectly entered
- Misspellings, typos, as well as multiple spelling variations
The most important thing to remember is that dirty data is incorrect.
The most frightening aspect of dirty information is that it's way too easy to introduce mistakes into your data. Whether you input data incorrectly or don't regularly update it or even make an unintentional alteration while making changes to your system, mistakes are possible to introduce anywhere in the procedure.
What is the reason data hygiene is important?
Let's look at how dirty data could be harmful to your company, and the very reasons why maintaining accurate data is essential.
- It's a waste of your time and money.
Dirty data will cost you. In the U.S. alone, businesses suffer losses of around $3.1 trillion annually due to inadequate management of data.
There's more than just money lost, it's also time. A study by LeadJen study found that sales staff wasted an average of 27% of their potential selling time utilizing dirty facts. Making the wrong call and getting the wrong number isn't an enjoyable experience for anyone.
As we have learned, time equals cash, and so following wrong data is the most sure chance to miss out on revenues.
- Emails and other marketing efforts won't be properly tailored.
In the event that your data isn't up to date or is inaccurate, you may send prospects emails or content that doesn't align with where they are in the buyer process.
These types of missteps could ruin your customer relations and brand reputation. This is a double blow.
The worst part is that mistakes similar to these can cause an increase in frequency of emails being re-subscribed to. Spam reports, unsubscribes and hard bounces are all a real possibility when you're not adapting your message according to the needs of your target audience. In no time, you'll begin to notice your list of email subscribers diminishing.
- There is no an accurate picture of your sale funnel.
In the absence of regularly reviewing and maintaining your database, it will be difficult to get knowledge about the performance of the sales funnel. Due to this, you'll be unable to answer queries such as:
- What number of qualified leads are out there?
- What leads should you remove from your sales funnel?
- How much is your churn?
Knowing the accurate answer to such questions will assist you decide where to focus your sales and marketing efforts. It is possible to develop OKRs (objectives and key performance indicators) from your personal data!
Dirty data defense: data hygiene best practices
As you can see, the negatives of having dirty data can be, well absolutely devastating to your business. But, never fear that the most effective data hygiene practices can be found here. No matter if your company is one-day or even a few years old, these data hygiene practices are applicable at any point during the course of your business. We'll get started!
- Begin by conducting the audit.
Audits can help you get an idea of your data's overall picture. It will help you determine which metrics are useful and not helpful and also what data can be less beneficial than it is. Through an audit it will be possible to tackle questions such as "Which information points do I need in order to make a decision?" and "Which areas are in most need of improvement?".
Essentially, the audit should identify the areas where there are issues in your data collection and regularization.
- Assess and improve the methods of data collection.
After the audit, or during it is an ideal time to take a look at all the sources and methods by which data enters your system.
Another consideration is how to reduce the need for manual data entry. Automation tools don't just cut down on the human error in data entry, but they also allow time to do greater tasks, like creating the next big popular TikTok (kidding or is it? ).
- Pay attention to the small specifics.
While in life we strive to not sweat the small things - however, this isn't the case for data. Data errors that aren't so obvious can quickly lead to huge issues - like the basis of a marketing campaign based upon inaccurate information. Yikes!
When collecting data, make sure that you are doing these things:
- Standardizing mailing addresses
- Verifying email addresses
- Common abbreviations, numbers and common abbreviations
By noticing the small little details, you'll be able to spot larger, significant mistakes. If you find a few of these, you might be able to realize it's time to incorporate more uniform operating practices or procedures for gathering and entering information.
- Establish a continuous cleanse of data.
I'm sorry, but your data hygiene journey isn't over even after you've completed the first cleanse. This is a continuous process that will require dedication and determination. Be aware that dirty data can be quickly incorporated into your system - therefore you need to keep an eye on the data like a hawk.
One of the best ways to prevent clean data from being a problem is to develop regular maintenance and standardization procedures. Below are some of the ones that we would recommend:
- Data entry standardization. Every single data item within your system must be manually entered in a uniform manner (especially if entered manually).
- Data errors are handled. Create guidelines (even when they're not intended for you) which clearly define the way errors are handled. For example, how will you remedy incorrect or duplicate entries?
- Preventing dirty data in the initial place. It could be as simple as adding vital fields to your data collection forms and eliminating non-essential fields. Additionally, you may perform an annual data audit to ensure that no dirty data is creeping back into your business through an old lead generation form, such as.
Data hygiene is the most crucial aspect
The mere fact of having data doesn't suffice for a successful business. make direct marketing and sales efforts.
To ensure that you don't lose revenue or time as well as customers or even compromising your brand's reputation Your data must be complete and error-free. Making sure your data is maintained with good the highest standards of hygiene will ensure that you have relevant information that you can utilize with confidence!
At , we believe that data is the key to success. data, and not only for big multi-person businesses however, we believe it is essential for our favourite type of business - those run by single, passionate entrepreneurs. We're here to talk with you!