It’s undeniable; data is a hot topic right now for us marketers. Scratch that, data is a hot topic everywhere. Whether you’re the CEO, IT specialist or social media expert, data is part of conversations in every department, and is likely an agenda item for most meetings. But when you talk about data that is important to your business, are you considering the data that makes up your contact database? Just think about how important this information is. You turn to it when you need to engage with your customers. You use it to accrue new business so your organization can meet (or exceed) its sales goals. Because of these reasons and many more, the information in your contact database is absolutely essential to the success of any initiative you undertake in order to reach and engage with your target consumers.

If you haven’t given much thought to your contact data, it’s time you do. Because if you’re not keeping this information up-to-date, accurate and genuine, you’re never going to reach the audience you’re trying to target. And who wants to spend time and money and not even get your message heard?

Consider this. As your team preps to launch a new marketing campaign or customer recruitment initiative, you task someone to make sure the contact database is ready to go. It’s just a matter of spell checking it, ensuring each entry has a name, address, email and phone number, and then you’re done. Right? Well, it’s not that easy. Small typos can drastically impact the deliverability of mail and emails. Just one digit off in a zip code and forget about it – your mail is being returned to you without the intended audience seeing it. Did someone type .cim instead of .com? Well, you know the drill. Bounce backs. It all boils down to this – without a clean contact database you won’t reach the people you want to reach, and you’ll create more work for yourself with less success.

Now if this isn’t convincing enough, let me boil it down into the top five benefits of contact Validation. Read these and I promise you’ll have a newfound respect for the validity of your contact database.

Increase Customer Loyalty – Put your data to work. Use it to learn about and segment your contacts. Do you want to send a mailing to customers based on geographic location? Date they signed up for your service? To the most engaged and loyal users? With a database that is comprised of the right data, you have the ability to segment and then personalize the experience so your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them. And people like this, trust me. But it only works if you have valid contact database to leverage.

Better Resource Allocations – It’s always good when you can save human resources and increase operational efficiencies. Consider integrating your database with web tools that offer real-time data verification and corrections. These services offer fast, accurate contact cleanup to keep your database in pristine condition so it’s ready anytime you need it – and you won’t have to spend one millisecond verifying street names or zip codes.

Improved New Customer Identification – There are data validation vendors out there who can give you a more complete view of your customers – and potential new ones. With a true understanding of who they are, where they live and other basic demographic data details, you can better address their needs and offer them relevant solutions so that they want to buy what you’re selling. And, like mentioned in Benefit #1, people like it when you speak directly to them. So, isn’t it time you gave the people what they want?

Campaigns with a Stronger ROI – Here’s the reality: databases contain thousands of insufficient addresses. Whether due to spacing issues, misspelled email handles or incorrect street names, these inaccurate, incomplete addresses will result in undeliverable mail. On the flip side, if emails don’t bounce back and mail isn’t returned, then you’re reaching recipients with the message intended for them. This is sure to directly impact the success of your programs and help bring sales to the next level.

Increasing the Qualified Lead Quota – Have you ever thought of your data as a silent sales rep? It’s true. You should consider working with a vendor that offers lead validation tools. With benefits from flagging the best leads to filtering out the bad ones, this can be an easy way to help bring in new sales – and you didn’t have to make one cold call.

The bottom line – contact validation should be part of your business. Luckily there are many vendors out there to help you. It’s their job to provide you with access to the best contact data available so you can do your job even better.

Article From: business2community.com