3 Step Data-Prep for Marketing Campaign Success

Creating marketing campaigns that not only target the right customers and prospects, but generate an increasing number of sales requires marketing data that is thoroughly prepped and ready to roll at a moment’s notice. In the immortal words of Whitney M. Young, Jr., “It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one, than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.” In today’s blog, we’ll equip you with three simple steps you can take to get (and keep) your data prepped and campaign-ready!

Step One: Determine Data Quality

Did you know that only 16 percent of companies describe their data as very good? Fortunately, even if you are one of the 84-percenters with questionable data, this is a fairly easy problem to fix. It’s also the issue that you should address first because the quality of your data impacts every aspect of your campaigns’ performance. If your martech systems have duplicate data, incomplete data, out-of-date data, or any other type of bad data, you’re not only missing opportunities, you are wasting your precious campaign budget on bounce-backs and putting your company at risk for being black-listed by Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. as a spammer.

Data Quality Task Sheet

To ensure your data quality is as pure as new-fallen snow (pre-acid rain), you will want to do the following things:

1. Take inventory of all data sources. Any martech in your stack that collects data needs to be on this list. Data that is pertinent to marketing and housed in systems in other departments, like sales and customer service, needs to be on this list, too, whether on or offline.
2. Connect all data sources. Ten years ago, this step would have been a major undertaking, but thanks to advances in modern martech, you can add an integration tool to your stack in short order and integrate everything yourself – without help from IT or a Vulcan.
3. Set a single data standard. Once all your data sources are connected, you will want to establish some data standards that enable ALL communications coming out of your company to appear uniform and on-brand. Doing this will help you sidestep campaign waste due to data duplicates. More importantly, setting data standards gives your company the put-together appearance that builds customer confidence and loyalty.
4. Ensure data is visible. Now that your data is connected and standardized, you need the ability to see and monitor its quality in real-time. The easiest way to do this is to add a customer data platform (CDP) to your stack. As the hall monitor of your martech stack, the CDP gives you a centralized view of all connected data. It also automates data validation and enrichment processes, and allows you to monitor data trends, segment data, and more. In short, your CDP is an indispensable heavy-lifter that ensures your data is perpetually clean, complete and campaign-ready.

Step Two: Get Personal

Assuming you’ve completed our data quality task list, your data is ready for use in personalizing campaigns. According to leading B2B data broker, ZoomInfo, the three biggest challenges marketers face with campaign personalization are:

• 40% — Experience trouble gaining insights quickly enough
• 39% — Do not have enough data
• 38% — Struggle with inaccurate data

Let’s address these issues in order.

Find Insights Faster

If your challenge is gaining insights quickly enough to react, there are a couple of things you can do. First, use your CDP to monitor the trends and behaviors that impact sales. In the same way that you check the health of personal financial investments by peeking at market performance throughout the day, get in the habit of doing the same with your marketing data. The more you check in on it, the faster you will recognize anomalies and opportunities. Secondly, if you haven’t used an automated content personalization tool, prepare to experience sheer unadulterated joy. When you hear about big companies that have mastered the art of account based marketing (ABM) by sending individually personalized campaigns to mega-lists, this is how they do it. When you connect a content personalization tool to your stack it sifts through all of the content available, pulls what’s of interest to each customer or segment, and then it automatically sends it to them.

Automated Inspiration

• Automated emails generate 320% more revenue than non-automated emails.
• Automated emails drive conversion rates 180% higher than batch emails.

Enhance Your Data

There are three kinds of B2B contact data: first party (your data), second party (a partner company’s data) and third party (data from a broker, like ZoomInfo). If purchasing lists of third party data is an option for your campaign budget, this is the quickest way to enhance your databases with current and actionable data. If, on the other hand, purchasing lists is not an option right now, consider sending a joint campaign with a company whose products and services compliment yours. Sharing lists allows you both to enjoy the benefits of a data boost to your lists.

Clean, Complete and Correct Data

If you are one of the 38 percent experiencing inaccurate data, return to our data quality task sheet and perform every task. Afterward, your CDP should be set to perpetually clean, correct and enhance data, so it’s user-ready at all times.

Step Three: Reach Your Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Now that your databases are clean, enriched and ready to personalize your marketing campaigns, you’re ready for the final step—to reach everyone available in your TAM. So how do you know whether or not each of your segments is reaching its full potential? Your CDP should be able to tell you. Ideally, your CDP will be integrated with leading data providers, which will allow you to see every single contact and account in your TAM. With this level of data visibility, you can compare your current database to the total number of customers out there, who are ideal prospects for your company. You can also ensure each and every one of your segments is reaching its full potential, which is a BIG DEAL since most marketers experience a 760 percent increase in revenue from segmented campaigns!