Real Answers for Marketing Maintenance
By Patrick Negrini
If your marketing is in a COVID-19-induced holding pattern, now is the ideal time to do a little housecleaning. And we don’t mean your floors. (Although, if your floors are anything like mine, you should get to those soon.)
What we’re talking about is cleaning up your marketing database, one of the most valuable tools in the marketing playbook. It is especially effective when budgets to acquire net-new leads are comparatively lower than revenue expectations, which is pretty much always true but especially true today.
A well-kept database is elusive, requiring a unique combination of strategic marketing foresight and technical expertise with some data science sprinkled in. But getting there can be easier than you think. Here are some tips and tricks to get you started.
Housecleaning Your
Way to Better Marketing
Start With Your Most Valuable Tool—The Database
1Marketing Automation and CRM Integration
a.Create a fake lead by filling out an MQL form on your website. Wait a few hours, then check your CRM to see if the information has been passed through.
b.Enrich your “fake” contact record in the MA platform with a few fields that supplement your form fill data. This information should pass through to your CRM by the next day.
c.Try this again starting with your CRM. The data should automatically pass in both directions.
d.Review your organization’s sales intake process with a sales leader. Check to see if your “fake” lead followed this process, or if changes to your CRM automation rules need to be updated.
e.Finally, check to see if your lead source and campaign were passed from MA to CRM. This is essential for closed-loop reporting. You can’t prove marketing impact on revenue without it!
2Data Quality, Cleanliness and Enrichment
a.Select a handful of contacts for auditing. Be sure to select at least one active prospect, one active client and one older record that is no longer engaged with your company in any way.
b.Download all fields associated with these records from both CRM and MA databases. Make the necessary changes to ensure that field names are identical and intuitive, and that useable fields are consistent.
c.Delete any unusable or blank fields. Chances are, you have acquired more than a few of these over the years. Cut the cord—it will only muddy the waters as you look to leverage the usable data in the future.
d.Be sure all active customers are identified in your databases. Work with the customer success team to be sure that you are not missing anyone.
e.Enrich your data by adding fields for missing information. Start with current customers, as this will be your lowest hanging fruit when it comes to outreach.
f.When you have completed this exercise for all active customers, begin enriching top prospects and former customers. You can start by using existing lists to help make the process more manageable.
3Customer Cross-Sell and Upsell Outreach
a.Create custom lists for each of the customer attributes you updated through the enrichment process.
b.Prioritize each segment according to your business and sales goals so you can start with the most impactful outreach.
c.Create cross-sell/upsell email campaigns by utilizing messages and offers personalized for each segmentation.
d.Track each segmentation individually. Optimize in real time. Do more of the good and less of the bad until you have a well-oiled customer upsell machine!
When you start with database cleanup, you set a strong base for your marketing revival expedition. Tune in next week for part two of this series as we discuss SEO maintenance for your website.
Reach out if you’d like to talk more about marketing cleanup through COVID-19 and beyond, and follow our weekly series for more business and marketing insights to help you make sense of these surreal times.
