Data is paramount to all your marketing strategies – from personalization to social media targeting and content creation.
Unfortunately, most B2Bs aren’t working with the most accurate data.
In fact, 62% of organizations are relying on data up to 40% inaccurate to drive their marketing decisions.
This is extremely costly. In the long-term, it isn’t sustainable either.
Here’s what you can do about it.
What is B2B Data Cleansing?
B2B data cleansing is exactly what it sounds like. You go through your database every so often (every month or quarterly depending on your organization) to:
- Remove entries that were never correct to begin with
- Update outdated entries
- Find missing fields
- Trash duplicate data
A routine data cleansing strategy is important because without clean intel on your leads, your marketing strategies are no use. Outdated, incomplete, duplicate, and incorrect information is extremely costly – especially over an extended period.
It costs $1 to scrub a bad piece of data before it enters your system and $10 to cleanse it later. However, if that single piece of bad data sits there in your system, it costs you $100 through poor business initiatives.
Why Isn’t a Data Cleansing Strategy Enough?
If you’re relying on data cleansing, that means your system is already plagued with incorrect information.
Plus, the act of B2B data cleansing itself is tedious and time-consuming. While software tools to help you cleanse data do exist, they still require human review and aren’t always effective. Just like malware and trojans can slip under your virus protection radar, bad data can go undetected for years.
Imagine how this can throw off high-risk strategies like account-based marketing?
It’s critical to keep your data clean from the moment it enters your system.
You should also employ tools that update your database automatically as information changes.
In B2C marketing, demographics don’t shift constantly: If someone is a college-educated young mother living in Tampa, you can reasonably assume those qualities won’t change over the next few years. If she moves, you can easily figure it out and adjust your tactics.
B2B marketing doesn’t enjoy the same luxury. Every year:
- 30% of your leads will change jobs.
- 34% of job titles/functions will change.
- 34% of the accounts in your system will change their company names.
- 37% of your leads will change their email address.
Now, how often do you think these pieces of information will change each month? On top of that, how often will the needs of your leads change daily?
A proactive data cleansing strategy ensures that you’re always basing your marketing and business decisions on the most accurate information possible.
What Can You Do Instead of Routine B2B Data Cleansing?
AI-driven solutions can help you make sure your data is always correct, complete, and up to date.
How often do you believe a lead fills out incorrect form fields just to access gated content on your site? It happens more frequently than you think!
The problem with bad data begins with your forms. Instead of gating all your content behind forms, let it breathe. Give your visitors a sample of each content asset. If they like what they see, give the option to provide a business email address and country location to download the rest – that’s it!
Artificial intelligence can take that verified business email and cross-reference it against publicly available information from sources like LinkedIn where leads provide their current company details.
You can still build comprehensive lead profiles with information like:
- Company name
- Job title and function
- Company size
The difference is that your database will only contain clean data from the very beginning.
This special system also blocks all free email domains like Gmail and removes the risk of impersonation because it only collects verified business domains. You’ll never have to worry about fake leads ever again.
Artificial intelligence can also monitor your lead database in real-time and update changes as needed. Instead of retroactively running B2B data cleansing to clear out incomplete, incorrect, or outdated fields, you’ll always have accurate information to guide your strategies.
How to Make the Best Use of Your B2B Data
Once you have a clean database, you can run effective personalization strategies. Correct lead data helps you understand which companies are browsing your site so you can develop targeted content for account-based marketing strategies as well.
Personalization isn’t a choice anymore – your B2B leads expect it. However, B2B organizations are struggling to implement effective personalization strategies at scale.
Research shows 80% of B2B organizations will abandon their data-driven personalization strategies by 2025 citing low ROI. The cause? Siloed and inaccurate data.
Once you fix that problem, you can create the experience your B2B leads expect. Again, AI comes into the picture to put your data to work. By taking your collected lead data, anonymous browsing data, and third-party intent data, AI provides a personalized solution for every visitor.
Whether a visitor is a known lead or random visitor, they still get a completely unique experience. Some tools to make this happen include:
- Adaptive Content Hubs: Your best content is organized in one convenient location. Once a visitor starts clicking and reading, the AI follows them around the site and recommends similar pieces of content based on earlier visitors with similar behavior and the current visitor’s behavior.
- Self-Nurturing Landing Pages: Instead of relying on a visitor providing their email address, use data-driven AI solutions to start nurturing them right away. Just like Netflix, self-nurturing landing pages provide an endless stream of relevant content for each session.
- Content-Driven Exit Intent Popups: Don’t ask for visitors to fill out a form as they leave your site. Instead, use popups that display personalized content recommendations based on their on-site browsing history and intent data!
These AI-driven tools let your data work for you by creating a hyper-personalized experience for everyone. People will stay on your site longer and conversion rates will skyrocket!
Are you ready to bring the power of artificial intelligence to your B2B marketing strategy? See Hushly in action now to get started!
