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Ditch Dirty Data: Lead Data Integrity Key to Sales Success

Judy Baldwin | Articles > From the section: Lead Management

November, 2014 |

Good prospecting, selling and effective lead nurturing require clean data. Clean data increases sales. A "junk" lead will not turn into a customer. Dirty data also decreases the marketing department's ability to measure aggregate lead data to accurately analyze for ROI.

Your sales team, dealers or distributors won't trust the leads sent to them if a lead is missing information, contains incorrect information or is a duplicate.

As marketers increasingly use multiple web-based lead generation sources that rely on the prospect to supply their contact information, the possibility of receiving dirty data also increases.

Here are steps to create clean leads with trustworthy data.

Caution: It may not be possible to completely clean and correct all data within a lead record. For example, you can't prevent an inquirer from fat-fingering the keyboard to misspell their name or email address. You may not know if an inquirer meant to type in Jud, Jude or Judy. However, you can prevent glaring errors, such as emails that end with .con instead of .com.

SmartLead by AdTrack uses these steps to automatically or manually clean dirty data before distributing the lead to the sales team.

Catch missing information: Use software or manually review each record to ensure that the lead record has a first and last name, a complete phone, email and mailing information before it goes
to sales.
Delete duplicates: Use a lead management system with defined rules to merge multiple contacts from the same household or business or to delete duplicate leads from the same person.
Upper and lowercase correction: Clean up lead records that look like this:"JOHN SmItH, 123 ELM streEt." Correcting case errors creates a better impression when sending prospects personalized emails and snail mail.
Validate addresses: Check addresses against U.S. Postal Service software to verify that an address is legitimate. If the inquirer claims they live at,"123 Starship Enterprise," the software snags it.
Verify consumer names to addresses: Use name/address verification software to verify that the name attached to a validated street address is a person that actually lives at that address.
Append more data: We advise our clients to keep online"contact us" forms are brief. Why? Because the more questions in the form, the less likely prospects will complete it or provide accurate information. We work with third-party firms to append certain types of data to lead records, such as Claritas Prizm® demographic data. Sales people will be more productive when they know more about a prospect before contacting them.
Define leads to keep out of the system: There are leads that you don't want distributed to the sales team. These include competitors, your employees, and inquirers that are clearly not in your target market, for example, students. Define these types of leads for your company so the lead management system will prevent these leads from being distributed to sales.

Data Quality Contributes to Increased Sales

When lead data quality improves sales will also improve and money is saved in the long run.

The sales force spends less time wading through low quality leads.
Leads don't sit in the sales person's lap and go untouched – where sales can be lost.
More opportunities are uncovered earlier in the sales cycle.
Accuracy improves the prospect's view of your company. Nurturing emails, direct mail and contact center calls avoid rejection because contact information has been corrected.
Dollars aren't wasted when direct mail doesn't make it to the prospect.
Passing only clean leads to sales reduces clutter in the lead management and sales force automation system. It provides marketing with better aggregate lead data to accurately analyze for ROI.

About the Author

Judy Baldwin is the Director of Marketing Communications for SmartLead (The AdTrack Corporation).
Baldwin has a background in both corporate marketing management and ad agency consultancy. A
pioneer in database marketing, in the 1980s she helped many of the nation's largest broadcasting
companies apply lead generation and lead management practices to build and manage customer
databases. She's executed marketing programs for large corporations, non-profits and healthcare
organizations including: The Miracle Gro-Scotts Lawn Co., Nationwide Insurance and Financial Services,
Texas Children's Cancer Center at Texas Children's Hospital, Ohio Hospital Association, The Ohio
State University Athletics Department, Reading Recovery, Ohio Opticians Association, a b-to-b
publisher and dozens of the nation's largest TV and radio stations.

About SmartLead by AdTrack

Since 1981, companies have relied on SmartLead's customized lead management systems and best
practices to smoothly and seamlessly manage leads from the moment the leads are generated, through
qualification, ranking, nurturing and distribution to sales people or channel partners.

SmartLead is the only full-service lead management company with:

Dedicated account managers to advise clients on best practices and implement their programs
Web-based lead management, sales force automation systems
Insightful analytics system
In-house marketing services: contact center, direct mail, email, printing, web hosting, and fulfillment/warehouse.