The Pedowitz Group‘s Alyssa Hewitt sheds light on the dirty work behind a clean database
When it comes to marketing operations, everything we do is driven by the need to collect and harness data. A clean database is essential, but here’s the thing: Have you ever heard of a clean database? Yeah – me neither.
Poor database health can have a crippling effect on your marketing operations. It’s an all-too-common misconception that if you throw enough technology at a problem, it will somehow resolve itself. This usually isn’t the reality. One of the most vital, albeit least sexy, elements to include in your marketing strategy is operational reporting. Here are four steps you can take to develop useful operational reports:
1. Report on data quality
The completeness, organization, and standardization of your gathered data is crucial to your ability to effectively market to your prospects. Ultimately, these reports identify your true marketable database, which is the population you should be projecting and reporting against. These reports will also help identify cracks in your data collection process that sabotage your ability to market to personas or segments.
2. Review deliverability in your database
Even though marketing automation platforms typically come with built-in processes to deal with bad email addresses, not all of them automatically end up in the invalid bucket. As such you may be including these leads in your campaigns, which will, at best, hurt your deliverability rate, and at worst get your IP blacklisted. Make sure you have a system in place to seek out these sneaky bad leads, and make sure they don’t have a way to get into your outbound efforts.
3. Review the operational configuration of your instance
Every good MAP should have a governance doc that defines things like naming conventions, folder structure, URL parameter guidelines, template libraries, program/campaign setup requirements, scoring, lead process, key fields, forms, etc. Compliance with protocol is important, and the MAP should be reviewed frequently to ensure all users are adhering to the guidelines. Failure to maintain consistency in a MAP can severely undermine your ability to report on revenue attribution.
4. Review the lead process
Know thy database! When a lead enters your system, what happens? How long does it take for an engaged lead to become marketing qualified? Are leads being assigned the proper owner based on your CRM routing rules? How effective is your scoring model? It’s important to study this kind of information and make sure expectations match reality. All too often, process inefficiencies are intentionally ignored because the perception is that change would be too difficult. Gaps in the lead process result in missed revenue opportunities and have a damaging effect on the buyers’ journey. This is one area that will always need fine-tuning. Make it your mission to sniff out weaknesses in the current architecture, then proactively make modifications where needed.
Operational reports allow marketing teams to be proactive instead of reactive. The big bonus here comes from the fact that you will be alerted to cracks in your data management processes well before they negatively impact performance. By keeping an eye on these vital signs, you won’t feel like you’re constantly reacting to issues after the fact. By doing this, you enable your team to effectively manage the revenue funnel in a predictable manner.