Our motto at DirectContact is to make every marketing manager proud of their CRM database. We want you to have relevant, accurate and complete contact and company information in you database at all times. The first and foremost to get there though to be in the know of every aspect, activity and count in your CRM database. In my past 5 years of working with 100s of companies, I have come across 5 marketers who had all the numbers at their finger tips. The others did not because its just not easy and unless there is a system and process in place to ensure it, its just not possible. Here are some of the things we think are critical to know about your CRM system at all times:
- What is the total number of contacts in your database?
- What is the total number of contacts with complete contact information including email addreses?
- How many contacts are missing email addresses?
- How many contacts are missing phone numbers?
- How many contacts have bounced emails in the last 6 months?
- How many contacts are missing title/role information?
- How many contacts are being added on a daily, weekly, monthly basis?
- Repeat the same questions for leads as well if you track those separately like in Salesforce.com.
- How many companies are missing full address information?
- How many comapnies for you have for each of the sales person’s geography?
- How many companies are missing contacts or leads altogether?
- How many companies / contacts have not be touched in the last 30, 60, 90 days?
- What is your criterion for REMOVING data from your CRM database?
- What is the main source of bad or incomplete data coming into your CRM system?
All it takes is for your to build a dashboard that gives you these numbers everyday – nothing fancy but just a table with these numbers. It will help you immensely as you plan your list building, account profiling and CRM data enrichment initiatives.