Businesses lose as much as 70 percent of their
​sales and marketing records to “decay” each year

Data Verification
Contact data doesn’t keep forever. In fact, businesses lose as much as 70 percent of their customer relationship management (CRM) records to “decay” each year. In layman’s terms, the contact info your sales and marketing team so diligently gathered is now out of date and useless
Experts in the industry agree, including Fenwick & West’s Director of Marketing Technology, Jon Metcalf. “The biggest hurdle to developing a useful, valuable CRM program is not the system,” he noted. “The biggest hurdle is how to get quality data into the system in the most efficient manner; not only at the beginning, but on an ongoing basis.”
Data verification is essential and is something most end users don’t consider (until it’s too late). Even if data is valid when it’s entered, you still need to contend with “data decay” (the gradual corruption of data over time). Sales and marketing applications involve collecting and storing data about people, clients and prospects. This data literally changes on a daily basis. According to the article “How to Prevent Data Decay From Ruining Your CRM System” , data decays at a rate of up to 30% per year. Combine this with the average “age” of a typical contact record and the math is startling. People move between jobs, get promoted and even die. Whether you’re conducting data validation at the point of entry or periodically reviewing your current data set, it’s essential. 

  • Cleanse data at point of entry
  • Cleanse existing data (project-based, particular segments, on-going)
  • Duplicate record detection and merges
  • Standardization of addresses (USPS standardization)
  • Normalization of common abbreviations
  • Normalization of company names using standard conventions
  • Remove data anomalies
  • Apply additional data classifications, segmentation, tags