Research commissioned by Dun & Bradstreet revealed 46% of business decision makers don’t have the right technology to take advantage of their data1. This in effect hampers marketing managers from successfully doing their job, with 42% of organisations claiming they have suffered as a result of having inaccurate data resulting in losing potential customers. This has lead to 19% saying they have lost customers because of possessing incomplete or inaccurate information about them due to typographical errors or syntax errors. Data is a company’s most valuable business asset, so check out these benefits of the data cleansing process with a cloud-based solution:
1. Helps you become GDPR compliant
Compliance is key for a Marketing Manager, and non-compliant data could lead to infringement of data protection laws. According to Egress, 52% of UK companies are still not fully compliant with the GDPR2. A further 37% have had to report an incident to the ICO, and out of that number 17% have had to do so multiple times.
Figures from The Times reveal fines totalling almost £100 million have been levied across Europe since May 20183. France was the worst offender of the costly errors, incurring fines of just over €51 million. Germany followed with €24.5 million, and Austria with €18 million.
Cleaning your data regularly will help your business with compliance and reduce structural errors when handling high-quality data. Checking your records against the Mailing and Telephone Preference Services (MPS and TPS) will enable you to remove any non-compliant or duplicate records from your database and reduce human errors.
2. Improves decision-making & increases productivity
Studies show that data-driven organisations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers and six times as likely to retain them4. Additionally, they are 19 times more likely to profit from data-driven analytics. Becoming more data-driven and having clean data will help improve decision-making, thus improving campaigns. This can ultimately have a positive impact on the customer experience and subsequently business performance and business operations.
Data cleansing via a cloud solution cleaning tool will also increase your business’s productivity, as the long hours dedicated to complex installed solutions will be eradicated by the seamless cloud experience. An Office 365 study revealed that 79% of respondents experienced increased employee productivity as a result of using a cloud approach5. This will subsequently enable the marketing department to better utilise their time and respond to customer demands with informed decisions.
3. Simple to use
73% of respondents to a survey listed lack of resources and expertise as a challenge when it comes to cloud computing6. In fact, 27% claimed it was a significant challenge. Despite many IT workers taking the necessary steps to increase their cloud computing skills, a proportion of employers still find it difficult to find workers with the requisite expertise.
Hopewiser’s simple-to-use Cloud Address Cleanse tool is the perfect solution for customer data problems, and will have you up and running within minutes. It comes complete with a fast, user-friendly wizard as well as helpful tips to guide you through the process. This makes it useful and effective even for those lacking cloud computing skills or adverse to a complex process.
4. Maximise ROI
Only 50% of B2B marketers are confident in the quality of their data7. Not only does bad data pose risks to businesses in terms of compliance, but efficiency is also hindered with added mailing costs and time taken to manually correct errors. If you’re looking for ways to save on your marketing spend, data cleansing in the Cloud will automatically remove any duplicate, deceased, and goneaway records. This avoids wasted expenditure, thus helping you maximise ROI and improve the analytics process of the customer database.
5. Maintains brand image & customer relations
Maintaining a company’s brand image through strong and accurate customer relationships is one the key business goals of a Marketing Manager. However, poor data quality can prevent you from achieving this and reduce business growth. In 2020 the NHS sent letters regarding Covid 19 to deceased patients8. Not only was this extremely upsetting for the families involved, but it also provided maximum embarrassment for the NHS. This incident won’t have done their brand image or customer relations any favours.
Keeping on top of your customer and prospect data will help avoid any mishaps and negative connotations being associated with your brand. There are various data quality solutions to help you see how many defects there are in your database, such as checking your records against various data sources. This in turn will help you achieve a clear view of your marketing data and streamline any marketing strategies.
For more information on Hopewiser’s data cleansing tools and the cleaning process, please register for our online services today:
Sources
1 Data strategies needed to future-proof business (DataIQ 2nd July 2019)
2 More than half of UK businesses still aren’t GDPR compliant (ITProPortal 11th September 2019)
3 European fines for breaches of data protection hit £100m, law firm DLA Piper finds (The Times 20th January 2020)
4 McKinsey Global Institute (Data Ideology 2020)
5 Trend Report: Why Businesses are Moving to the Cloud (Office 22nd May 2017)
6 Top 10 Cloud Computing Challenges (Datamation 2nd August 2018)
7 Only 50% of B2B marketers confident in data quality (B2B Marketing 18th September 2018)
8 Coronavirus-letters-sent-in-error-message-to-family-members (NHS Digital 2020)
, updated 14th December 2023.
