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Best Practices of Data Cleaning Tips

10 must-know tips for spring-cleaning your data!

 

Tip #1 Know Your System

Your CRM probably has data cleaning tools you’re probably unaware of.

GreenRope offers extensive tools for data cleaning, so you know you’re working with the most up to date and relevant information. We have tools for quickly removing bounces or unsubscribes, merging duplicate contacts, and merging contact and company data. You can also easily modify contact info en masse for contacts who belong to a certain group or have triggered certain types of marketing automation. Our platform can easily change the status of a contact too (prospect, active, inactive) based on certain data field values shared by multiple contacts.

 

Tip #2 Train Your Staff

Your employees are the first line of defense against bad data. It’s essential that they receive comprehensive training on how to enter, update, and format the data in your CRM.

 

Tip #3 Create a Guidebook for Reference

Have your data management procedures written down somewhere so your team can reference it when necessary.

GreenRope’s wiki tool makes it easy to build internal documents for sharing essential information on your organization’s process.

 

Tip #4 Peer Review all Data Entries

Have someone double check that your information is correct, standardized, and consistent before uploading it. This will save you time and money in the long run. 

 

Tip #5 Update!

Data changes. If you have an extensive customer database, you should regularly go through it to make sure all your info is still relevant and up to date.

Our robust contact search feature makes it’s easy to find contacts based on any information you may have associated with them. For example a merger means that you need to update the ‘company’ data field for all contacts who used to belong to a particular organization. Instead of having to manually update every place where a contact is associated with the outdated organization, you can go to Contacts > View > select Modify Contacts from the left hand side of the page > Overwrite data > Choose fields to update: ‘CompanyID’ > new value: ‘company x’.

 

Tip #6 Make Sure the Emails you Have are Active

Don’t clutter your databases with the emails of bounced and unsubscribed contacts. Address these by using GreenRope to reset their status or remove them from your group.

In GreenRope, you can easily search for unsubscribers, bounced contacts, spam complaints, and duplicate emails under Contacts > View > Include, to see just how many irrelevant emails you may have in your system. You can then head over to Contacts > Tools > Clean. Here you’ll find a number of solutions for cleaning inactive emails. You can select ‘Remove unsubscribed contacts from this group’,  ‘Remove bounced contacts from this group’ or ‘Reset bounced contacts in this group to valid contact status’. Additionally resubscribe links can be sent to unsubscribers individually, if they unsubscribed on accident or have a renewed interest in your organization.

 

Tip #7 Make Sure You’re Collecting the Right Data!

Make sure that all the information you’re entering into your system is relevant to your business.

Double check that all the information you’re collecting is useful to your organization.

Use custom user-defined fields to format your GreenRope account to your specific business needs. Under Contacts > User Fields > select ‘Add New Custom Field’ to create a new, custom data field. Data types include multiple choice, open text, integer, date, and more. You can also use this area to set the visibility options for your new field and determine what groups and users will have access to it.

 

Tip #8 Standardize Fields

Ex. country, state/province, zip codes, industry, titles, etc.

Maintaining standard formatting will help you need to put together workflows and access reports.

Don’t leave room for human error!

Use Select One or Select Multiple for your custom user-defined field option. Instead of allowing open text, you can prefill the options to maintain consistency.

You wouldn’t want a field like ‘country of operation’ to be listed as US by one person and USA by another. Simplify this by offering prospective customers a preset range of answers.

 

Tip #9 Avoid Silos

Make sure you have all relevant data stored in a central location. This will allow you to retrieve and share relevant info with ease.

Consolidate now to avoid growing silos in the future.

Silos are the roadblocks to success. Un-integrated tech can result in data being trapped in a single location and a team member having to take the time to manually transfer it from one platform to another. Invest in integrated technology to guarantee a free flow of relevant data to the departments that need it. 

GreenRope is a Complete CRM, meaning that all your digital business needs are met by one platform, eliminating the risk of data getting trapped in one of several platforms. GreenRope also has extensive integrative capabilities, meaning your favorite business software, like Intuit Quickbooks, can easily be integrated with your GreenRope account.

 

Tip #10 Ask for Updates

Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask clients to update their profiles.

It will be a lot easier for them to update their info than for you to track it down.

Use Update Profile links in your emails or periodically send out update profile emails and ask clients to update their information. 

Under Communicate > Emailer, you can easily add an update profile link by clicking the ‘Profile/Unsub’ button in the email builder.

 

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