Data – The Foundation for Lead Management

It should be no secret that the success of any relationship marketing campaign starts with good data.  However, many marketers are still struggling with keeping their data up-to-date.  In order to stay on top of their data, B2B organizations should focus on three key areas:

• Database storage
• Database controls & hygiene
• Data profiling

Database Storage – Separating Marketing and Sales Data

Many companies hold to a common practice: using a single database to house customer and prospect data.  Typically, they use the corporate CRM system to do so, allowing both marketing and sales access to the data which not only increases the chances the data will be contaminated with inaccuracies but also creates a data security risk.

The reality is that sales and marketing each utilize data differently including how they collect, sort or interpret the information. For example, marketing does not need to know about every touch point made by sales to a customer. Conversely, sales doesn’t need to receive all the contact names from an event list.

Best-in-class companies create separate yet integrated marketing and sales databases. This approach allows marketing to maintain their data in a marketing automation application, while the sales data is maintained in the corporate CRM system. Then integrating the data allows both to share what’s necessary for the other to be most effective.

Database Control & Hygiene

Up to 20% of data goes bad each year which makes maintaining the integrity of data one of the biggest challenges organizations face. Organizations that have achieved a best-in-class data process develop business rules to determine who will have access to the data and how it will be controlled and monitored.

Business rules should be developed to determine:

• Who will be able to change and append data?
• What groups or individuals will have access to the database?
• What fields will be synchronized between the marketing and sales databases?
• What fields are mandatory?

Whatever rules and agreements you develop, it will be vital to your lead management success to have them documented and adhered to by both sales and marketing.

Data Profiles

As the B2B buyer continues to evolve and become more educated, mass impersonal communication is ineffective. Relationship marketing, or creating a one-to-one dialogue with prospects and customers, is more important than ever in a B2B context. To accomplish this, organizations should create an ideal customer/prospect profile based on key criteria. This profile becomes the foundation for all campaigns and helps to determine the segmentation strategy, message, and offers that are utilized.

The most effective source a company has for building these profiles is the current customer database. Companies need to mine their customer data and look at commonalities such as:

• Vertical industries
• Annual revenue
• Employee size
• Common functions/titles of buyers
• Geographical location

Working to find these commonalities will provide insight into who is most receptive to purchasing, and will allow for more sophisticated and targeted marketing campaigns.

Once you have a better understanding of the your data, its time to move onto the next step in building a lead management process, Lead Planning.