Data cleansing is
the process of cleaning up all company data by discarding incorrect,
incomplete, duplicate, or outdated datasets. It’s a vital practice among all
businesses and can considerably enhance the effectiveness of data analysis,
thus increasing the success of your marketing campaign. With dirty data,
you’re likely spending more money on your marketing than needed, failing to
generate as many leads as you could, and receiving inaccurate information about
the customer. Here are the top ways data cleansing will enhance your data
analysis and increase the ROI of your business’s marketing strategy.
1. Eliminate
incorrect data: When a potential customer is prompted to provide their
name, email, and other identifying factors, there is no way to ensure the
information they provide is accurate. In fact, people often supply fake emails,
phone numbers, and names simply to access a site or buy a product, while not
subscribing to the email list of the company. However, this incorrect data will
reduce the ROI of your marketing campaign, as you’ll be spending time and money
sending email blasts to fake or incorrect email addresses, thus lowering your
potential conversions. By eliminating all incorrect or incomplete datasets, you
can reduce the spending on your marketing campaign, while increasing leads and
conversions, resulting in better results from your data and an increased ROI.
2. Eliminate
duplicate data: The same customer can appear in your system numerous
times, and if the duplicates aren’t deleted, it will reduce the effectiveness
of your marketing campaign. People often visit websites from a multitude of
devices, use different emails, and even alternate between their maiden name and
current last name, which can result in the same person’s info being logged
numerous times. This will lead to inaccurate data analysis by making you think
you have more prospective leads than you actually do. Cleaning up that data and
eliminating duplicates will provide you with more accurate numbers of leads and
conversions, as well as more accurate demographic information from your
customers.
3. Gain an
accurate view of your business: While a human could easily detect that
Jerry Hartfield and Jery Hartfeild, each located at the same address, are
clearly the same person, your computer database can’t. Thus, without cleansingyour data, your data could indicate that you have more customers than you do,
resulting in poor marketing decisions based on that data. By cleaning data regularly,
you gain up-to-date records of all current customers and leads, allowing you to
base marketing decisions on the most accurate information available.
4. Eliminate
spamming: It’s simply bad practice to continue emailing customers
that have unsubscribed from your email list. It will increase your marketing
budget, while failing to generate more leads, and it will likely irritate the
customer as well. Yet, with duplicate data, you risk continually emailing the
same person, even after they’ve unsubscribed from your list. By cleaning up
your data, you can eliminate duplicate information, which will provide you with
accurate customer information, and allow you to avoid accidental spamming.
