63% of marketers planned a job change in 2021, according to a recent study from We Are Rosie, a company that helps brands and agencies find freelancing talent.

“We have two agencies with over 400 open roles right now,” said founder and CEO Stephanie Nadi Olson.

With so many people in advertising changing roles, it is essential that you keep your database of contacts clean and updated. Accurate contact information is necessary for you to leverage existing relationships, to make effective cold email outreach campaigns and to make your pitches with the right decision makers.

Below are five hacks you can use to clean your contact data and supply yourself with the information you need to close advertising deals. 

How to Maintain Clean Contact Data in 2022

1. Run an Audit 

You don’t know what contact data isn’t up to date until you see what you have. For this reason, one of the best ways to keep your contact data clean is to run an audit. 

To do this, sit down with internal company stakeholders, especially those in sales and marketing and ask them what data they have, why they’re collecting it and where it’s stored. These teams will usually house data in a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to nurture prospects and build relationships with existing customers.    

Once you know what data you have, you can get a bird’s eye view of what’s incorrect, out of date, incomplete, or not compliant with GDPR, CCPA and other laws that regulate how you can handle contact data. 

If you use an ad sales intelligence tool to help maintain your list of contacts, make sure it upholds the highest privacy standards. This is critical, because any large company that buys contact information is required to comply with certain laws, like CCPA law. 

This means they must be able to show how they obtain the names their sales reps call upon and that their sources are compliant as well.

MediaRadar is dedicated to all major privacy protection laws and goes even further, allowing users the option to correct, add or remove their name from our database. Furthermore, we also collect written consent to be in the database.  

2. Clean Contact Data 

Data audits help you understand your data and any pitfalls that may negatively impact how you do your job. However, if you don’t take that information and apply it to a data cleanse, you won’t be making any meaningful progress. 

How to Clean Contact Data

• Remove duplicate contact data 
• Verify existing contact data 
• Update incorrect entries 
• Archive or delete outdated contact data 

For contact databases of any size, manually cleaning all of this data can become a time-consuming and tedious process that prevents you from focusing on more important tasks such as putting together more meaningful pitches. 

Not to mention, it leaves the door open to human error. So, instead of doing it by yourself, take advantage of a data cleaning tool, like OpenRefine (previously Google Refine), that’ll do much of the heavy lifting for you.

3. Detect Incorrect Contact Data

A full-fledged audit might be in the cards, especially if you haven’t cleaned up your database in some time. However, there are lower-lift ways you can detect incorrect data and lessen the lift in the future. 

For example, you can call a prospect or connect with them on LinkedIn. If you take this route, make these conversations valuable. Don’t just call them and say, “Hey, I’m reaching out to make sure I still have your number” or “I wanted to double-check that you still work for the same company.” Instead, have a strategic conversation that verifies the data and builds the relationship.  

Similarly, you can spend five minutes after each email blast deleting data from unsubscribes or hard bounces. While these steps may seem small, consistently taking them will keep you armed with accurate data and save you from investing countless hours doing a major clean-up. 

Remember: Every second without clean contact data is a missed opportunity to move a prospect closer to the finish line. As cliche as that sounds, in a competitive and fast-paced world where countless companies are pitching your prospects, every second counts. Don’t waste them with dirty data.

4. Use Triggers to Automate Contact Data Cleaning 

The good news is that maintaining clean contact data isn’t something that’ll consistently eat into a ton of resources. Sure, it’s something you should frequently do, but there are steps you can take to stay on top of your game. We’re talking about using triggers to automate the process.  

For example, you could create a reactivation campaign that automatically sends an email with a unique subject line to contacts who haven’t engaged with one of your emails in the past year. Based on their inactivity, you can assume that either their data is out of date or they’re not in the market for what you’re selling. From there, you can attempt to verify it, delete it or archive it. 

5. Use an Ad Sales Intelligence Tool that Keeps Contact Data Fresh

Today, many third-party data vendors can help accelerate and streamline the data cleaning process. But third-party data vendors often sell inaccurate data that hasn’t been verified by humans and is not held to a timely standard.

Instead, work with an ad sales intelligence software that keeps its data fresh and accurate.

MediaRadar employs its own internal team, to research, compile, and verify all of the data that comes into our system. We consistently ensure our data is of the highest quality by combining proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with an in-house human verification process.

Data is updated every three months, because after this time period contact data decays quickly. We also offer an on-demand concierge request that will immediately review and update the information for your prospect.

Clean Contact Data: The Key to a Successful Sales Team in 2022 and Beyond

In a fragmented digital world ripe with competition, you need the most accurate, detailed and up-to-date contact data. Without it, you can’t see the big picture, optimize your prospecting efforts, accurately predict prospect interest and have strategic conversations that close deals. 

“Although data has been hailed as the new oil, just like with oil, the value depends on whether we can clean it, refine it, and use it to fuel something impactful,” write authors at Harvard Business Review. “Without a model, a system, a framework, or reliable data science, any data will be useless, just like 0s and 1s.”

But clean data with a system will lead to a shorter sales cycle and more deals. 

Learn how MediaRadar can help you maintain your clean contact database by trying a free demo.