4 Ways to Determine Whether Your Data Quality Measures Up

Ask any analyst worth his salt the best way to measure ROI and he’ll tell you that information is wholly dependent on the quality of your data. If any aspect of the data is off, so are your measurements, projections and business decisions. In short, data-quality is the ultimate key performance indicator (KPI) for evaluating your success in reaching your intended target. But how do you measure your data quality? You look at four critical variables.

1. Completeness

According to research, the average B2B company pays between .15 to .35 cents per email address when purchasing a list, and regularly spends up to $1,000 for this information. Now imagine if more than half of the list contained incomplete addresses. You’d be inclined to think the list seller owed you a big refund — and you’d be right. However, if you check-in with leaders at most B2B companies they will tell you that 56% of lost sales and missed opportunities were directly caused by bad data, a.k.a. missing or incomplete information. When data is incomplete, efforts, opportunities and budgets are wasted.

Fast Fixes: 1) Add auto-population prompts to your forms so that prospects can give you what you’re asking for with less effort, which increases the likelihood of getting more complete information. 2) Always use a quick and comprehensive tool that appends data before you launch campaigns.

2. Accuracy

People are forever changing their names, titles, jobs, office locations, and other essential information that allows you to keep in touch. Unfortunately, they may not always share these changes with you, but they will be offended and judge you as woefully out-of-touch if you get their information wrong. Moreover, today’s modern marketer is expected to consistently create a more engaging user experience, which requires a personalized approach. But, in order to create a sale-boosting, loyalty-driving personalized experience, you’ll need one thing above all others —accurate data.

Fast Fixes: 1) To take hold of the 80 percent of customers who are more likely to buy from you if you provide a personalized experience, add real-time verification to all data-collection forms on your website. 2) Use an integrated data management platform, like Command, that validates the accuracy of your marketing lists and ensures they are always good-to-go.

3. Conformity

American scientist, Margaret Mead once joked, “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” Naturally, humans rebel against the idea that they are like everyone else by refusing to input their data like anyone else. All joking aside, both people and technology prefer to go about their own way of doing things. It’s a practice that leads to inconsistencies in data and inconsistencies lead to wasted budgets at best, and annoyed customers at worst. A classic example of data inconsistencies is a list with duplicate contacts. If you plan to send nice business gifts to your best clients this holiday season, imagine their confusion when they get five Yeti tumblers engraved with five variations of their name. Sure, they may be glad you gave them a cup for each day of the working week, but you just wasted $140 (not including shipping) on one client, who now questions whether or not they should continue spending money with you since it appears you’re not on top of things.

Fast Fixes: 1) In order to create an environment where data is consistent across all sources within your enterprise, you will need to connect those sources via an integration platform and then use a data dashboard to centralize your view of the data. 2) Once all data sources are connected and you’ve got a single-source view, then you can use a data standardization tool to establish a format that creates ongoing consistency across all sources. Ultimately, your goal is for all contact data to be unique and just like everyone else.

4. Timeliness

When it comes to data, timeliness may be a relative variable that is measured differently at every organization, but that doesn’t mean it is any less important. After all, delivering relevant offers and incentives to customers requires you send them the right message at the right time. It also requires that your data is up-to-date so that you can respond quickly to market changes and opportunities. When data is perpetually kept in peak condition, you are better able to identify patterns and trends that impact website performance. You are also able to track the growth and speed of improvement of your data quality.

Fast Fixes: 1) Make sure your data management platform offers the ability to optimize data, glean insights and monitor promotions in real-time. 2) As impossible as it may seem, research conducted this year found that only 47 percent of B2B marketers use a marketing automation platform (MAP). Talk about missed timing. If you’ve taken steps to make your data clean, complete and standardized, you owe it to yourself to capitalize on the profit increases that come when you use a MAP to connect with customers across multiple channels – at just the right time.