Dirty data costs companies billions every year in wasted resources and lost productivity. This is true whether the data is purchased, gathered via download offers or stored in a company’s internal database.

This problem is driven by several factors. Today’s mobile workforce is changing jobs faster than ever before. According to Gartner, 30 million of the 138 million workers in the US will switch jobs in the next 12 months. Now add that to the number of businesses that move or get acquired every month. It’s easy to see how they dirty data piles up and piles up fast.

To make matters even worse, feeding dirty contact data into a marketing automation or CRM system has a multiplier effect. This can quickly derail success by:

• Delivering multiple wrong messages to the wrong person or persons.
• Annoying customers and prospects with redundant messages.
• Losing credibility due to botched attempts at personalized communications.
• Failing to leverage multi-modal marketing capabilities.
• Misinterpreting campaign success metrics.
• Creating sales inefficiencies.

So how can a company address this problem? It’s not easy. Most marketers are overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of duplicate entries, old data, inaccurate contact details and countless records in different states of completion. This existing data has likely been gathered by many different individuals over multiple years.

The best way to start cleaning data is by targeting the right companies, along with the decision makers who actually determine the buying process.  Develop a profile of what your ideal customer would look like, working from there you should be able to weed out less-than ideal candidates or at least give some kind of prioritization to companies in your database.

To get more from your in-house data for lead generation, you need to keep it clean ― but that’s like hitting a moving target. With companies merging or going out of business and a workforce that is constantly changing, marketing databases get dirtier at an alarming rate.

In fact, 2.1% of data goes bad every month, according to MarketingSherpa. This means  over 25% of contact data goes bad per year.

The only problem is knowing which 25%.

The good news is that marketers can dramatically improve their campaign results by using the right strategies to consistently update, clean and refresh their lead-generation database. According to SiriusDecisions, “the company that markets with a healthy data-cleansing routine can realize nearly 70% more revenue than an ‘average’ organization, based purely on data quality.”

Lately, we’ve been talking about the best ways to start with data cleanup, what to consider when marketing to your in-house database, important signs that your database might need help, and more.

Armed with this information, you should be in a better position to optimize your in-house database, reduce wasted efforts, improve conversions and get more revenue from your marketing dollar.

Do you have some great tips for starting the clean up process?

In addition to starting the New Year with great optimism about the prospects for all of us marketers, I am excited and privileged to serve you as ReachForce’s new President.  Based on feedback from you, I plan to continue communicating within our present theme of lessons learned, insights and tips to help increase the effectiveness of your B2B marketing efforts.

In 2010, B2B marketers will face new challenges and have new priorities.  Here are three key challenges and priorities I see:

1. Budgets are stretched thin. So why not look at your in-house databases as the goldmine they could be? The hidden gems in your database are ripe to be unearthed.  Marketing data hygiene and database maintenance should be key initiatives for every marketer in 2010.
2. Increasing market reach and generating leads are more important than ever.  What are your plans for growing your contact database this year?  But sheer numbers alone aren’t the answer.  Filling your marketing database gaps with the right, most relevant contacts will be critical for success.
3. Separating yourself from the herd is crucial to differentiating yourself.  Do you have all the crucial demographics you need to slice and dice your data? If not, this is the time to act.  By segmenting your database, you can get the right message to each of your prospects and customers with laser-sighted precision.

I look forward to exploring all of this with you and more and wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

The number one responsibility of any B2B Marketer is to keep his or her company’s marketing and sales funnel full,
with leads converting quickly to drive profits. In other words, to keep the company’s lifeblood flowing.  The continuous battle to meet pipeline and revenue projections is frustrating when using traditional techniques.

There is a better, more deliberate and predictable approach to increasing the velocity and efficiency of the
marketing and sales funnel. Hence the term Funnelnomics—the practice of extracting the most value out of the
leads as they move through your funnel.

This is the first in a series of blog posts to present a proven method for improving your Funnelnomics by accelerating the conversion of qualified buyers into profitable customer relationships. It provides a framework for integrating your marketing lead generation programs with sales execution processes to drive growth and profitability.

Step 1: Mapping Your Marketing and Sales Funnel

The traditional sales-focused funnel is a relic of the past—a product of the rapid change that has taken place over the last six to eight years. It reflects the old practice of Marketers buying lists of names to fuel programs, expecting a 2% return and then turning over all leads—qualified or not—to Sales to convert into buyers.

Today’s marketing and sales funnel must be developed and managed by understanding both the sales process and by considering the way buyers move through the purchase process. It is vital for B2B Marketers to document the customer buy cycle including the critical parties involved, process and length of buy cycle.

According to industry analysts at SiriusDecisions, only 1% of B2B Marketers consider the customer buy-cycle when it comes to planning and executing marketing and communications programs.

Understanding the customer buy cycle is an important step in optimizing Funnelnomics—enabling Marketers to deliver targeted communications that move leads from one stage to the next in the funnel in the most cost-effective way possible.

Marketers must fully map the customer Decision Making Unit (DMU) including the title and role of each person in the decision-making process. Marketers also must understand the type of information they need (based on their individual pain points) and how they would like to receive it (i.e. direct mail, email, etc.) in order to move the decision maker to the next level of the funnel.

Once the customer buy cycle has been mapped, it is time to map the sales cycle. Product Marketing, Customer Service, Sales organizations, and Marketers together should:

• profile customers and define top customer characteristics
• define target audience characteristics including demographics (revenue, employees, industry) and psychographics (personae, likes, dislikes)
• define the sales cycle including phases and parties involved
• benchmark conversion rates to move to the next phase
• define decision drivers and triggers including customer needs, events, etc.
• secure agreement on qualification criteria for lead scoring
• gauge Sales and Inside Sales capacity for engaging with qualified buyers

This must be done in order to monitor and manage prospects as they move through the funnel to optimize marketing programs for continuous improvement.