Data is anything but static. If it were, you could compile a list once and never have to look at it again. We know that isn’t the case when we look at the pace of change in our own lives. Multiply that by your number of customers, prospects, and leads, and you see why it takes sophisticated marketing automation technology to keep up with it all. It’s not a step you can skip, though, if you want to stay in touch with your customers. Here are a few reasons data enhancement’s a must.
Keeping Pace with Modern Technology
SIC codes tell an important story about your leads who work in businesses that fall neatly into them, but what about the independent contractors who make up the growing gig economy, organizations that span multiple industry types, or start-ups in innovative fields that haven’t yet been categorized? Data enhancement lets you categorize and contextualize leads who might otherwise be difficult to follow.
Following Your Best Leads
You invest a significant amount of time and energy into cultivating relationships with your leads. If you aren’t able to maintain a connection, you can’t build on that relationship as leads switch jobs, get promotions, or move to other departments. With data enhancement, you’re able to continue the conversation even as leads and prospects move. That’s good news for your prospects too as they don’t have to start at the beginning with you and can pick up where they left off in the buying cycle.
Staying in Touch with Customers
If leads are silver, customers are gold. They represent your most valuable marketing investment, and each one has the potential to mint more leads through referrals and good word of mouth. With so much at stake, maintaining your customer relationships is critical to your success, yet customers don’t always make it easy for you to find them – at least, not without data enhancement.
They may not notify you when they move to a new department or region, but data enhancement tools keep you up to date on your customers so you never have to lose touch. Marketing databases such as ReachBase get regular updates from the U.S. Post Office’s National Change of Address (NCOA) database, including updates to business addresses. Data appends can also coordinate email addresses, demographic data, and other details to keep account files complete and current.
Bringing Back Lost Prospects
To paraphrase Tolkien, not every lead who wanders is lost. Some prospects who showed interest in the past might still be interested if they could only find you again. With data appends, you can find them and save them the legwork. You can also sort and score these leads as you would new ones, identifying those who align well with your customer base’s demographic and firmographic information and approaching them first with an offer to reconnect.
Customer data is ever-changing; your database should be too. Data enhancement services that turn your business email list into a starting point, not a static document, keep you current no matter how quickly your market moves.
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