What is data hygiene, and why is it important to creators
In business, data reigns supreme.
With the high stakes that are dependent to data it's clear that clean and accurate data is crucial for the success of a company. Data that is inaccurate - also called dirty data could result in unsuccessful attempts to grow.
Thankfully, there's a solution to this problem - the data hygiene.
In this article in this post, we'll discuss how data is stored, what hygiene is and why it's important. Additionally, you'll learn about the best data hygiene techniques to keep your data clean and your company thriving.
What kind of databases are used to store information?
- Contact details
- Demographics information
- Email marketing engagement
- Your past purchases of products or products or
- Relevant information on their needs to your offerings and services
Bigger companies can make use of a larger analytical and business intelligence database for accessing even more data details about their company. For example, a clothing store would track their sales by SKU of the product, an airline would have information on flights, or a software-as-a service company would record data on how customers utilize various parts of their software. Sometime, these data become more specific and even whole teams at large companies that maintain databases and analyze the information.
Data hygiene is equally important in both cases. However, since we're focused on the creators of this blog, we'll focus primarily on the data that is collected by the CRM.
What exactly is data hygiene?
The process of ensuring data hygiene is the ongoing, continuous procedure that ensures the integrity of data. This means you're maintaining data to ensure that it's correct, consistent, and reliable. The cleaning of data helps prevent businesses, like your own, from struggling with issues created due to unclean data.
But, what exactly is dirt data? The term dirty refers to data when it exhibits some of the following traits:
- Duplicate information
- Incomplete (think the contact fields are not filled in)
- Older
- Incorrectly entered
- Typos, misspellings as well as multiple spelling variations
The most important thing to remember is that dirty data is wrong.
The worst thing about filthy information is that it's very easy to introduce errors into the data you store. If you enter data in a way that isn't correct, don't update it regularly or even make an unintentional alteration while upgrading your system, problems could be introduced at any point in your procedure.
What is the reason data hygiene is crucial?
We'll now look into the ways that data with dirt could affect your company. These are just a few of the reasons why keeping good data is so important.
- It's a waste of money and time.
Data that is not clean will cost you. In the U.S. alone, businesses suffer losses of around $3.1 trillion annually due to inadequate management of data.
The issue isn't just that money gets wasted, but also time. A study by LeadJen study found that sales staff wasted average 27% of potential sales time using incomplete facts. Calling the wrong number and getting the wrong number isn't fun for anyone.
But, as we all have learned, time equals cash, and so following wrong data is the most sure way to lose out on income.
- Emails and other marketing efforts won't be properly tailored.
In the event that your data isn't up with the latest information or has been erroneously updated it could be sending prospects messages or other content that don't correspond with their current position in the buyer journey.
These types of missteps could tarnish both your customer relationship and brand reputation. The result is an absolute double-whammy.
And, what's more, mistakes similar to these can cause an increase in email churn rate. Unsubscribes, spam complaints, and hard bounces are possible if you don't tailor your content for your intended audience. In no time, you'll begin seeing your email lists diminishing.
- You won't have complete insight into the sale funnel.
Without regularly monitoring and maintaining your database, it will be difficult to get insight into the quality of the sales funnel. Due to this, it's impossible to answer queries such as:
- What are the number of leads that are qualified available?
- What leads should you remove out of your funnel?
- What's your churn percentage?
Finding the right answer to questions like these will help you decide where to focus your sales and marketing efforts. You might even develop OKRs (objectives and key outcomes) from your personal data!
Dirty data defense: data hygiene best practices
As you can see, bad data can be, well, downright devastating to your company. Don't fret that the most effective data hygiene practices are here. Whether your business is a one-day or even a few years old the best practices for data hygiene are applicable at any time during the course of your enterprise. Let's get to it!
- Begin by conducting the audit.
A thorough audit can help you get an idea of your data's overall picture. It helps you ascertain what data is useful, and what's not useful and what information is more harmful than is helpful. By conducting an audit that you can address questions such as "Which information points do I need in order to make a decision?" as well as "Which aspects are in the most require of improvement?".
The audit must identify the areas where there are issues in the data collection process and also regularization.
- Assess and improve techniques for data collection.
In the course of the audit or following is an ideal moment to examine at all the sources and methods through which information enters your system.
A second consideration is to make data entry as simple as possible. Automated tools do not just reduce mistakes in the data entry process, they allow time to do greater tasks, like creating the next big famous TikTok (kidding or do we? ).
- Pay attention to the small details.
In our daily lives we strive to not be concerned about small details - it's not the case with information. Data errors that aren't so obvious can quickly add up to big issues , such as the basis of a marketing campaign based on flawed information. Yikes!
In data collection, ensure that you're doing the followingthings:
- Standardizing mailing addresses
- Verifying email addresses
- Common abbreviations, numbers and common abbreviations
By noticing the small little details, you'll be able to spot larger, more impactful mistakes. If you spot a couple of these, you might come to the realization that it's time to incorporate more uniform operating practices or guidelines for capturing and entering data.
- Establish a continuous data cleansing process.
Sorry to say that your data hygiene journey doesn't end even after you've completed the first cleanse. It's an ongoing procedure that requires commitment and perseverance. Remember - dirty data is quickly incorporated into your systems , so it is important to keep an eye on the data like a hawk.
A great way to ensure that clean data from being a problem is to create continuous maintenance and consistency processes. Here are a few we recommend implementing:
- Data entry standardization. Every data point on your system needs to be manually entered in a standard way (especially if entered manually).
- Data errors are handled. Develop rules (even even if they're only to yourself) with clear guidelines for how to handle errors. For example, how will you remedy incorrect or duplicate entries?
- Preventing dirty data in the initial place. It could be as simple as adding vital fields on your forms to collect data as well as removing unnecessary fields. Additionally, you may perform regular data audits to ensure dirty data isn't getting back into your company with an out-of-date lead generation form for example.
The most important aspect of data hygiene
Solely having data isn't enough to grow your business or directly promote sales or marketing.
To avoid losing revenue as well as time and clients or even compromising your reputation as a brand, your data needs to be free of errors. Maintaining your data with the highest standards of hygiene will ensure that you have useful insights that your company will be able to use with confidence!
At , we are believers on the value of information, and not only for big multi-person businesses as well as for our most favorite kind of company - the ones operated by one-person, enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Let us know what you think!