Anyone in marketing or sales understands the importance of an excellent CRM data hygiene policy. A solid database is more than just reference material; it is a valuable asset that directly translates to success. Data boosts marketing across the board, whether a company is attempting to maximize its ROI or an agency is attempting to deliver solutions to clients.

However, a disorganized, unprocessed dataset does more harm than good. That is why businesses must practice proper data hygiene.

Almost every single CRM, especially HubSpot-supported ones, depends on a well-maintained database to function properly. Everything from distributing newsletters to sending personalized messages depends on maintaining a well-structured database. So, what exactly is data hygiene, and how can it help you get more out of your HubSpot CRM?

What Is Data Hygiene?

Data hygiene refers to all of the ongoing tasks involved in ensuring that data is clean, or error-free.

When data is “dirty,” it is obsolete, duplicated, incomplete, or inaccurate. These errors can occur at any moment throughout the data’s existence in your system, whether it was introduced improperly at the outset or an unintentional alteration was made when updating your records.

Data hygiene comes with many benefits, including:

  • Improved Efficiency
  • Improved Team Experience
  • Improved Customer Experience
  • Better Support of Data Segmentation and Enrichment

What Makes up Good Data Hygiene?

Good data hygiene practices result in increased lead generation efficiency, a better customer experience, and increased ROI. These are all critical when starting and growing a business.

A CRM with good data hygiene has high-quality data, which is:

  • Accurate: To ensure the accuracy of your data, create processes for verifying, entering, and updating CRM data from the beginning. This can help you avoid the nightmare scenario of a database riddled with errors.
  • Complete: It is critical that you identify what information your team needs for which tasks and create processes for obtaining the information your team requires to work effectively.
  • Uniform: Uniform data generates rules that help your team in processing and using the data in your CRM. Similar information must be presented consistently throughout your system.
  • Actionable: Ensure that your team can use the data for things like creating reports, automating processes, or developing strategies.

How Can Data Hygiene Increase the ROI of Your HubSpot CRM?

1. Audit Your CRM

The first step in developing ongoing data hygiene is to conduct a system audit. Having a complete picture of the state of your data will help you in resolving it in a timely manner.

An audit examines your data and determines how much of it is useless, outdated, or incomplete. What information is missing? Is it consistent? Which areas of your database require immediate attention?

Once you’ve identified where the problems are, move on to the next steps, which will focus on parsing out that information bit by bit.

2. Pay Close Attention to The Details

Inconsistencies in your data, no matter how minor, can lead to much larger problems.

You may discover that some data is incorrect while developing your campaigns and strategies, forcing you to update it as you go, wasting time and resources. Worse, you may completely miss the flawed information and end up making major decisions based on it.

Inspecting details of each data entry in your database will help you ‌detect errors, such as incomplete and incorrect entries.

3. Standardize Rules

Standardization rules can help keep your data clean. Consider which input fields should be standardized.

Here are some examples:

  • You should convert all numbers and monetary values to a consistent representation.
  • Unless absolutely necessary, ‌avoid case sensitivity.
  • Salutations such as Ms. and Mrs. should also be standardized, according to one standard dictionary.
  • Convert abbreviations like Ave. and St. to their full forms, or vice versa.

4. Automate Data Cleansing

Manually cleaning your data is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. Investing in systems that automatically eliminate duplicates, clean the data, and complete it is the best way to make it more efficient.

Because humans will inevitably make input errors, automation is especially beneficial. With just one misspelling, you could lose a lead and potential revenue.

Cleansing systems can sift through massive amounts of data and use algorithms to detect anomalies and outliers caused by human error.

These systems are especially useful for removing duplicates from your data. When a customer enters a personal email address in one form and a business email address in another, you will receive two separate records for the same lead. For better data hygiene, an automation system will use multiple rules to merge and remove these duplicates.

5. Update Your Data Frequently

Because customers change emails often, get promotions, or change careers, your data will become obsolete with time.

This means that if you cannot keep your record database up to date, you risk sending the wrong message to the wrong contact. By updating records periodically, you avoid chasing dead-end leads that waste time and resources. Consider investing in a system that automatically updates your records.

Conclusion

Dirty data, which manifests itself in a variety of ways such as duplicate data, inaccuracies, and duplicate information, is one of the most significant risks to the growth of any business. Too many instances of incorrect data could render your market efforts obsolete altogether.

A CRM tool, such as HubSpot, includes a lot of built-in functionality that helps in data cleaning, also known as data hygiene. However, if you do not standardize rules, pay close attention to details, and keep your database updated, you risk basing your sales and marketing efforts on flawed information, which will slow your ROI or even cause you to lose out on significant revenue potential.

Fortunately, impeccable data hygiene can be achieved with the right knowledge and expertise. The Vonazon team has you covered. Connect with us for a free consultation to learn how we can help you clean your data and grow your business.