Data Append Best Practices: Strategic Data Management Tips

In today’s B2B marketing landscape, it’s incredibly vital to have a clean database.

“Data are becoming the new raw material for business.” ~ Craig Mundie, Senior Advisor, Microsoft

Data is a valuable asset for any business, and that’s why every successful marketer tries their best to maintain a clean and accurate database. The main reason for this is because data enables them to engage with their target client base effectively and frequently.

More and more organizations today are starting to realize the importance of having complete, clean, and up-to-date data. For this reason, most companies spend a significant amount of their time and money on database cleansing techniques and tools.

Every savvy marketer will tell you that relying on inaccurate or outdated information for ­marketing is the most foolish decision you’ll ever make as a B2B marketer. Why? Doing so will do nothing in terms of getting your desired outcomes. Instead, it’ll only lead to a loss of customer confidence in your brand and waste both your time and resources.

The first step to ensure the information you’re relying on is in its best condition is by data cleansing – which involves a process where outdated, incomplete, or duplicate contact data is identified and corrected.

However, simply cleaning your data isn’t enough, and that’s where data append comes in. This post will discuss its importance, followed by data append best practices for the best results.

So, keep reading to find out.

Data Append: Why It Matters?

Stats suggest that  business establishments realize 40% percent of their business data is incorrect. As a B2B business, reviewing your marketing data for inaccurate, redundant, or obsolete information can help maintain data quality up to some extend.

Nonetheless, simply identifying whether a specific contact phone number or email address needs correction or not doesn’t always ensure deep cleaning of your database. Data appending services offers a much deeper cleansing process for replacing incorrect or outdated data with new, up-to-minute information.

Data appending takes the already existing data information and adds valuable and often new details. It helps create detailed buyer personas and enhance lead quality, which ultimately translates to higher conversions and ROI on your marketing efforts.

Also referred to as data enrichment, data appending is key to provide your team accurate and actionable insights where they require it most.

The enriched or appended records might contain specific key information like:

• Contact-level personal info such as social media accounts, birthdates, and marital status
• Company demographic & geographic data
• The client’s tech stack
• Email Vs. phone contact preferences for specific stakeholders

Irrespective of what the details added might be, every new information arms your marketing and sales team with insights for more personalized, meaningful, and productive communications with existing and prospective customers.

Now that you know how valuable appending your data can be for your B2B business let’s concentrate on data append best practices for optimum success.

1.      Begin With Existing Clients’ Data

In any company, the most valuable and accessible information is its customer data. Therefore, it’s only reasonable for you to start with it first when looking to append. Besides, it’s much affordable to keep an existing client than acquire new ones, claims 70 percent of businesses.

Appending your existing client data first will help update any irrelevant information. It can even add new points about your current customers, like their social media handles, their skills, the organization they work for, etc. From there, proceed with your highest value leads, including your sales qualified leads, marketing qualified leads, and then finally focus on low-value prospects. Ultimately, you’ll have a database that’s clean and appended.

2.      Append Regularly

Today, data is more volatile and dynamic than ever. According to some studies, customer data deteriorates by about 30-70 percent every year. At the same time, the volume of various critical data continues to increase.

Another study reveals that every hour, approximately 300 businesses change their address. Over 1200 changes their contact telephone number, about 700 new enterprises pop up, and nearly 800 professionals either leave or start their CEO position.

When such rapid changes taking place, can your business actually afford to append information once annually, or even once per quarter?

As such, it’s essential to connect with technology partners and vendors that enable you to consistently,  quickly, and efficiently clean and append your database frequently – preferably every month or even once quarterly. In doing so, you’ll always know how, where, and when to contact your target audiences.

3.      Append During Off-Season Too

In any business, regardless of the sector or industry, there’s a busy season. Similarly, there’ll be off-season too, which is an ideal time for all data cleaning and appending tasks.

In case you don’t have any data management plan in place, making use of any off-season will offer abundant opportunities to enrich your data. Consequently, you can prepare your database for the upcoming busy season wave.

4.      Seek Help When You Need

It’s common for businesses to outsource to handle certain activities that their team cannot manage. For instance, you hire a copywriter for marketing collateral or an agency when you need a website. Similarly, when it comes to data appending, not everyone is well-equipped to execute this technique effectively. As such, it becomes critical to seek the help of a professional data management agency.

Final Say

Data is among the most vital assets for any organization today. And to flourish and prevent the blows of strategic competitive marketing, data integrity and privacy have to be maintained.

Entrepreneurs and business owners make complex decisions based on the information they obtain from this data. And as such, it’s essential to follow some strategic data management practices to ensure your database remains relevant, consistent, and void of any flaws.

Data Management may not be the most fun thing to do. However, as a marketer, if your goal is to enhance resource allocation, targeted marketing, and returns on investments, it’s imperative to have a data management system in place for success in this growing digital landscape.