What is data hygiene, and why it's important for creators
In business, data reigns supreme.
Given the importance of relying to data it's easy to see why clean, good data is essential to your business's growth. Data that is inaccurate - also called dirty data could result in unsuccessful business efforts.
The good news is that there's a remedy - data hygiene.
In this article, we'll explore how data is stored, what hygiene is and the reasons why it's crucial. Additionally, you'll learn about the best data hygiene practices to ensure you're keeping your data in good order and your business booming.
What types of databases can store data?
- Contact information
- Demographics information
- Email marketing engagement
- Your past purchases of products or services
- Information on their needs relevant to your services and products
The larger companies could use a more comprehensive data base for business intelligence and analytics to gain access to more information aspects about their businesses. A clothing store would track their sales by product SKU, an airline would have data on their flights, or a software as a service company would record data about how their customers use various parts of their software. Sometime, these data become more specific and even whole teams at large companies that maintain databases and analyze the data.
The importance of data hygiene is equal for both use cases. But since we're focusing on the creators of this blog, we'll focus primarily on the data that is collected by the CRM.
What exactly is data hygiene?
Data hygiene Data hygiene is the collective and ongoing process to ensure the purity of information. This means you're maintaining data to ensure it's accurate as well as reliable, consistent and stable. Cleaning data prevents companies similar to yours from having to deal with problems caused from dirty data.
But, what exactly do you mean by dirt data? It is considered dirty data if it shows some of the following traits:
- Duplicate information
- Incomplete (think the contact fields are not filled in)
- Outdated
- Incorrectly entered
- Misspellings, typos, and multiple spelling variations
The bottom line - dirty data is wrong.
The worst thing about filthy data is that it's all very easy to introduce errors into the data you store. When you input data improperly or don't regularly update it or accidentally make a alteration while updating your system, errors can be introduced anywhere in the process.
Why is data hygiene important?
We'll now look into how data that is dirty could be harmful to your business, which are the very reasons why maintaining accurate data is essential.
- Then you'll be wasting both time and money.
Poor data can cost you. In the U.S. alone, businesses lose roughly $3.1 trillion each year due to ineffective data management.
It's not just money that's lost, but time too. The Study by LeadJen study found that sales personnel wasted average 27% of the potential selling time utilizing dirty facts. Calling the wrong number and calling the wrong person is not enjoyable for any person.
However, as we are aware, time is cash, and so following bad data is a guaranteed method of losing revenues.
- Emails and other marketing campaigns won't have the proper tailoring.
When your information isn't kept up to date or is inaccurate, you may send prospects emails or posts that don't match where they're at in their buyer journey.
These types of missteps could damage your relationship with customers and brand reputation. The result is an absolute double-whammy.
What's worse - missteps such as these could lead to an increase in frequency of emails being re-subscribed to. Unsubscribes, spam complaints, and hard bounces are all an option if you do not tailor your email content according to the needs of your target audience. All too quickly you'll start seeing your email lists shrinking.
- There is no an accurate picture of your selling funnel.
Without regularly monitoring and maintaining your database, you'll lack information about the effectiveness of your sales funnel. Because of this, it's impossible to answer queries such as:
- How many qualified leads are out there?
- Which leads do you want to eliminate from your sales funnel?
- What is your churn rate?
Being able to answer such questions will assist you determine where you need to put your marketing and sales efforts. It is possible to develop OKRs (objectives and key outcomes) from your personal data!
Dirty data defense: data hygiene best practices
You can see that bad data could be absolutely devastating to the business. Don't fret that the most effective data hygiene practices are available. If your business is one-day or even a few years old, these data hygiene practices can be implemented at any time during the course of your business. Let's get to it!
- Begin with the audit.
A thorough audit can provide you with an overview of your data's big picture. It helps you ascertain what metrics are useful and not helpful and also what data can be worse than beneficial. With an audit, you'll be able to answer questions like "Which metrics are required?," as well as "Which aspects are in the most require of improvement?".
In essence, an audit will find out where issues are occurring in the data collection process and also standardization.
- Review and enhance techniques for data collection.
In the course of the audit or following is a great time to take a look at each source and the method that data is entered into the systems.
A second consideration is to minimize manual data entry. Automation tools not only reduce data-entry human errors but also free up time for greater tasks, like creating the next popular TikTok (kidding or are we? ).
- Pay attention to tiny details.
In our daily lives we strive to not be concerned about small details - this doesn't ring true with data. Data errors that aren't so obvious can quickly lead to huge issues - like creating a marketing strategy based on flawed information. Yikes!
When collecting data, make sure that you're following the following:
- Standardizing mailing addresses
- Verifying email addresses
- Common abbreviations, numbers and common abbreviations
When you are aware of the tiny aspects, you'll have the ability to catch larger, significant mistakes. If you discover a handful of either, you could be able to realize you need to implement more standard operating procedures, or even simple rules for collecting and inputting information.
- Create an ongoing cleaning process for data.
I'm sorry that your data hygiene journey doesn't end even after you've completed the first cleanse. It's an ongoing process that will require dedication and determination. Keep in mind that dirty information can be quickly incorporated into your systems - so you must watch out for the data like a hawk.
A great way to ensure that dirty data at bay is to create regular maintenance and standardization procedures. Below are some of the ones we recommend implementing:
- Data entry standardization. Each data entry in your system should have been entered using a standard method (especially when manually entered).
- The handling of data errors. Make rules (even if they're just for you) with clear guidelines for how to handle errors. As an example, how do correct duplicate or incorrect entries?
- The goal is to avoid dirty data in beginning. It could include adding important fields to your data collection forms as well as removing unnecessary fields. In addition, you can conduct an annual data audit to ensure that no dirty data is getting back into your company - by using an outdated lead generation form, as an example.
Data hygiene's bottom line
The mere fact of having data doesn't suffice to expand your business, or direct sales and marketing efforts.
To ensure that you don't lose revenue, time, and customers, and even jeopardizing the reputation of your company Data must be free of errors. Maintaining your data using proper hygiene procedures ensures that you've got actionable insights your business can use confidently!
At , we are believers that data is the key to success. data and not just for huge multi-person businesses as well as for our most favorite type of business - those run by single, passionate entrepreneurs. We're talking to you!