Has your data become mummified?

Has your data become mummified?

Having old data can never be a good thing. It leads to a breakdown of contact between your organisation and past clients and contacts. If companies have moved addresses, merged, been acquired, gone into liquidation or simply, your decision maker has left, then your marketing methods can soon be left worthless.

How does data cleansing work?

If you choose to outsource your data cleansing, many companies will work by taking your existing data, and ensuring it is up to date as possible. This can be done by:

- Calling each company on your database to ensure that the decision maker contact details are up to date.

- Where a contact has left, and where possible, ask for the relevant person for the company, and add this in

- At the end of the campaign, the company should send back your list so you can start using it again for your marketing

Some data cleansing companies may also append your existing data with other details you might not have, but are useful when segmenting your data, such as number of employees and sector. If you or your outsourced data cleansing company are using a data supplier, it is very simple to add any companies in that might not be in your database, but in your target markets.

How often should your data be cleansed?

This question may seem a fairly straightforward one to answer, however this is not always the case. In many instances I would recommend a full data cleanse every 6 months if you are particularly active with outbound marketing.

If you have campaigns which you are saving for a later date it may be worth waiting until you are sure you are going ahead with the campaign before you waste resources updating it.

If you are using telemarketing within your existing marketing strategy then the data should be constantly updated when you are working through your lists.

Beth Walthew

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