Refreshing Your Data: Why Is It Important?

Author: Gautam Mane

We live in an era where data technologies are at the core of marketing strategies. Be it the key source for building a base of qualified leads, identifying buyer personas or creating curated content for them, data provides valuable insights that give businesses an edge with their customers. It can be said without an iota of doubt that data that is cleansed, enriched and timely refreshed is a force to be reckoned with.

The Relevance of Customer Data

Most of us have heard of the term ‘Big Data’ which stands for a stupendous amount of information generated by customers and other users with every passing second. Big data analytics examines large amounts of information to reveal buyer behavior that provides businesses with detailed insights about their target markets. This helps them achieve a higher ROI on marketing. Such an incredible amount of data is difficult to manage, which is why people are specially trained to deal with this onslaught of information. They are called data scientists who mine specified information out of the maze of big data.

Big data is mostly raw and unstructured and therefore unusable without being mined responsibly. Businesses must define constraints and chisel a narrower set of information for marketing purposes. Once a structured set of data has been derived, it must be scrubbed off of duplicity and other errors. After a successful data cleanse, the remnant database should be appended and enriched by cross-referencing it with external sources. Once your dataset is ready and in use, it will need to be refreshed on a regular basis. While several businesses follow most of the aforementioned data handling processes in a timely fashion, they fail to give data refreshing the kind of importance that it deserves.

Additional Read: Refreshing Your Data: Why Is It Important?

What Is Data Refreshing?

Data Refreshing is the action of updating active data and weeding out dead information based on a regular and known schedule. This process is automated and is accomplished algorithmically. Today, companies operate in an information-centric and data-driven universe. Businesses rightly demand the most current data, especially in the disciplines where data is sensitive or transforms very quickly. Ours is a consumerist society with a highly competitive climate. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously refresh data. Businesses need to stay current with the needs and preferences of their customers and data refreshing is a key contributor to this school of thought.

Importance of Data Refreshing

Data refreshing is required to synchronize data and to ensure the accuracy and consistency of the final output in a timely fashion. Let us look at the multiple benefits of data refreshing in detail –

Keeps Email Database Current

Every business maintains an updated collection of email lists by engaging with their potential customers through lead generation campaigns. An email database must contain qualified leads that help companies generate a higher rate of conversion. This database tends to decay by at least 22.5% annually according to a report by Marketing Sherpas. It happens as potential buyers alter contact details, switch jobs, opt-out of email communication, or abandon an old email id for a new one. Therefore, it is important for businesses to continually add fresh contacts and weed out the decayed ones. This can be done through data refreshing. No point wasting your marketing efforts by pitching your offerings to dead email ids.

Ensures High Customer Engagement

Refreshing data allows businesses to stay current with customer profiles. Buyer needs are constantly evolving which is why buyer personas are also continually transforming. Enterprises need to grapple with this never-ending transformation. If data is not refreshed then the information companies have about their customers becomes outdated, adversely affecting the quality of the brand’s customer communication. This, in turn, lowers customer engagement with the brand.

Lead Nurturing Done Right

Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with customers at every stage of their buying journey. Refreshing data allows businesses to identify and stay updated with high-quality leads and loyal customers who bring the company a ton of revenue. Without data refreshing, sales and marketing departments might end up nurturing the wrong leads which will prove to be counterproductive for the enterprise and will demotivate the team.

Additional Read: Custom Data: Because Spray-and-Pray Doesn’t Work

Tapping Multiple Channels

Customers today interact through omnichannel to purchase their favorite products and services. These channels include social media platforms, mobile applications, web portals, etc. Businesses must have an online presence that addresses multiple channels and reaches out to customers on their choice of platform(s). Refreshing data allows enterprises to figure out which customer persona interacts with which channel the most. Understanding multi-channel trends for identified personas can prove to be very beneficial for brands.

Our world’s data is growing at an alarming rate of more than 40% annually. One can’t harp enough on the efficacy of data analytics as a tool for businesses to stay ahead of their competitors. But, only data that has been properly mined, timely refreshed, cleansed, and enriched will make all the difference when it comes to developing successful marketing strategies.