Your Data is Dirty
Overview: We have already discussed the “Three Ps” how your undefined
process leads to staffing with the wrong skill sets and an automation platform
designed without process. Now let’s look at a notorious thief robbing you of
your ROI: dirty data.
According to
the Journal of Industrial Engineering and
Management[1], “Poor data quality can imply a multitude of
negative consequences in a company… The implications of poor quality data carry
negative effects to business users though: Less customer satisfaction,
increased running costs, inefficient decision-making processes, lower
performance and lowered employee job satisfaction.”
Not
convinced? According to the Harvard Business Review[2], “Studies show that knowledge workers waste
up to 50% of time hunting for data, identifying and correcting errors, and
seeking confirmatory sources for data they do not trust.”
These
articles are only reference technically “bad” data, meaning the data record
itself is either incorrect or incomplete to the point of creating an erroneous
decision outcome for which the data record was designed to support. In addition
to technically bad date, there is also a class of data that, although
technically correct - is equally ineffective because it is off-purpose. In our
marketing and demand gen world, that could manifest as technically correct
records for contacts who are not in our target market(s). For instance, my
company sells supplies to restaurants and I have a database full of contacts
for hair salons. This might mean I’ve got a great contact record for Judy, who
will never buy a Pizza oven from me. Correct, but useless.
Let’s return
to our hammer factory for another analogy to our “marketing factory.” (Again,
apologies to manufacturers, as these illustrations are definitely
oversimplified.)
Our hammer
factory requires raw materials to manufacture the two component parts. The
hammer head requires steel and the handle requires wood. But will any old steel
and any old wood do? Of course not! Nobody wants a hammer that may or may not
disintegrate on impact when striking a nail, so a great deal of diligence goes
into the specification of those products to insure they meet the requirements
of the hammer being manufactured. In fact, there are organizations, such as the
American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) whose sole purpose is to establish testing systems
and grading criteria for materials such as wood and steel.
Your
marketing and demand gen raw materials are data. Just like steel and wood in
the hammer factory, your data must meet specific criteria to meet an acceptable
use standard. You can begin to assess your data quality standards by answering
a few simple questions.
· What are your standards for data quality?
· Who is responsible for creating and
maintaining your data standards?
· How do you know if your data meets your
standards?
· Who is responsible for enforcing your data
standards?
Are you
thinking of your Demand Center data in this way? What can you do to course
correct if you discover you have no data standards or nobody responsible for
those standards?
Notes:
Commit to your process first. Your Marketing
Automation Platform can only do what you tell it to do. If your process is not
well defined and engineered to accomplish your marketing goals, your platform
will only help you make the same mistakes faster and at a higher volume.
Think small (like those extremely successful
Volkswagen ads from the sixties and seventies). Your platform should be engineered
to follow a process of communicating very defined messages to a very targeted
audience. If you are continually sending large batches to broad audiences, you
will soon email your database into extinction.
Think like a factory designer. Allow your
platform to do the work it does well and let skilled specialists perform those
tasks they do well.
DO NOT rely on “best practices.” The best
practice for one organization may be the worst for another. I don’t even refer
to best practices, but rather “best principles.”
Test, test and test some more. Are you
validating your demand generation practices? Think of your optimization process
as a never-ending game of “king of the hill.” The current process champion only
remains champion if that process can defend against every challenger.
People,
Process and Platform – the Three P’s. For the past five weeks, we’ve talked
about how to conceptualize your demand center as a “marketing factory.” We’ve
used the oversimplified analogy of a hammer factory (my apologies to anyone out
there who manufacture hammers – I’m sure this oversimplification doesn’t nearly
capture the true complexities of your process) to view the concept in a bit of
an abstraction.
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