What exactly is data hygiene and why it's important for creators
In business, data reigns supreme.
Given the importance of relying on data, it's easy to see that clean and accurate data is crucial for your business's growth. Inaccurate data - often referred to as dirty data could lead to a failure in attempts to grow.
The good news is that there's a remedy - data hygiene.
In this post, we'll explore data storage, what data hygiene means and the reasons why it's crucial. Also, we'll discuss data hygiene best methods to make sure you're keeping your data in good order and your company thriving.
What kind of databases store data?
- Contact information
- Demographic data
- Email marketing engagement
- Purchases you made in the past of your goods or products or
- Details on their requirements that are relevant to your services and products
Larger companies may use a more comprehensive data base for business intelligence and analytics to gain access to more information details about their company. For example, a clothing retailer would record their sales by SKU of the product or a flight company would record data on their flights, or a software as service company would record data about how their customers use various parts of their application. Sometimes, this data gets granular and even whole departments at big companies that maintain databases and analyze the data.
It's equally crucial to maintain data hygiene for both scenarios. However, since we're focused on creators in this blog and not on the CRM, we'll concentrate on data collected through the CRM.
What is data hygiene?
Cleanliness of data refers to an ongoing and continuous process to ensure the purity of the data. That means you're ensuring that your data is maintained to ensure that it's correct, consistent, and reliable. The cleaning of data helps prevent businesses such as your own from having issues caused due to dirtier information.
But, what exactly do you mean by dirty data? It is considered dirty data if it has any of the following characteristics:
- Data that has been duplicated
- Incomplete (think the contact fields are not filled in)
- Older
- Incorrectly input
- Typos, misspellings, and spelling variants that are multiple
The most important thing to remember is that dirty data is incorrect.
The most frightening aspect of filthy information is that it's too easy to introduce errors into your data. When you input data improperly or don't regularly update it, or make an accidental change while updating your system, errors can be introduced anytime during your procedure.
Why is data hygiene important?
Let's look at the ways that data with dirt could be harmful to your company. These are one of the main reasons that keeping good data is so important.
- You'll waste both time and money.
Data that is not clean will be costly. In the U.S. alone, businesses are losing around $3.1 trillion annually due to inadequate management of data.
The issue isn't just that money gets lost, but time too. The Study by LeadJen study found that sales personnel wasted average 27% of the potential sales time using incomplete data. Calling the wrong number and reaching the wrong person isn't fun for anyone.
As we are aware, time is money - so ultimately following wrong data is the most sure method of losing revenues.
- Emails as well as other marketing campaigns won't have the proper tailoring.
When your information isn't up to date or is inaccurate You could send prospective buyers emails or content that doesn't match where they're at in their buyer journey.
These types of missteps can tarnish both your customer relationship and brand reputation. It's a true double whammy.
And, what's more, mistakes like these may lead to an increase in the rate of email churn. Unsubscribes, spam reports, as well as hard bounces are an option if you're not adapting your message to your audience's needs. All too quickly you'll start seeing your email lists dwindling.
- There is no clear insight into your selling funnel.
Without regularly monitoring and maintaining your database, you'll be unable to gain knowledge about the performance of the sales funnel. Due to this, you won't be able to answer questions like:
- How many qualified leads are there?
- What leads should you remove out of your funnel?
- What's your churn percentage?
Knowing the accurate answer to questions like these will help to determine the best places to focus your sales and marketing efforts. You might even make OKRs (objectives and key results) from your own data!
Dirty data defense: data hygiene best practices
It's clear that the negatives of having dirty data can be, well, downright devastating to your business. But, never fear that the most effective data hygiene practices are here. If your business is day or years old the best practices for data hygiene are applicable at any point in the life of your company. It's time to get going!
- Begin with the audit.
Audits can help you get an idea of the big view. It will help you determine which data is useful, and what's not helpful and also what data can be worse than beneficial. By conducting an audit, you'll be able to answer questions like "Which metrics are required?," as well as "Which sectors are most in need of improvement?".
Essentially, the audit should identify the areas where there are issues in your data collection , and the standardization.
- Assess and improve techniques for data collection.
During the audit or after is a great opportunity to look at all the sources and methods that data is entered into your system.
Another thing to consider is how you can minimize manual data entry. Automated tools do not just reduce mistakes in the data entry process, they allow time to do other tasks that are more crucial - such as making your next viral TikTok (kidding or are we? ).
- Be aware of the small specifics.
When we live our lives, we try not to sweat the small things - this doesn't ring true with data. Small errors in data can quickly add up to big issues , such as basing a marketing campaign on inaccurate data. Yikes!
When collecting data, make sure that you're following these things:
- Standardizing mailing addresses
- Verifying email addresses
- Standardizing common abbreviations and numbers
By noticing the small details, you'll be able to catch larger, significant error. If you spot a couple of either, you could be able to realize it's time to adopt standard operating procedures, or even simple rules for collecting and inputting data.
- Establish a continuous cleanse of data.
Sorry to say that your data hygiene process isn't finished following the initial clean-up. It's an ongoing procedure that requires dedication and determination. Remember - dirty data is easy to introduce into system - therefore you need to be on the lookout for it with a keen eye.
One of the best ways to prevent clean data from being a problem is to create continuous maintenance and consistency processes. We have a list of processes that we would recommend:
- Data entry standardization. Every data point on your system needs to be manually entered in a consistent manner (especially if entered manually).
- The handling of data errors. Make procedures (even when they're not intended for yourself) with clear guidelines for the way errors are handled. For example, how will correct duplicate or incorrect entries?
- The goal is to avoid dirty data in first place. This could include adding important fields to your forms to collect data and removing nonessential fields. In addition, you can conduct an annual data audit to ensure that no dirty data is creeping back into your business - by using an outdated lead generation template, as an example.
Data hygiene's bottom line
Solely having data isn't enough for a successful business. direct sales and marketing efforts.
To ensure that you don't lose revenue, time, and customers or even compromising your brand's reputation Data must be free of errors. Making sure your data is maintained with good hygiene practices ensures you have relevant information that you can utilize with confidence!
We at iData believe on the value of information, and not just for huge multi-person businesses as well as for our most favorite type of business , those run by single, passionate entrepreneurs. We're talking to you!