Data enrichment, data append, data enhancement—modern marketers have heard all these terms and more when it comes to the process of improving their data assets for more effective outreach.
Imagine having access to a bounty of valuable insights about your target audience. That’s precisely what data enhancement can do for you! By adding more details to your datasets, such as demographics, contact details, and behavior insights, you can understand your customers better. Armed with this knowledge, you can craft highly personalized and targeted marketing campaigns that truly resonate with your audience.
In this blog, we’ll explain why data enhancement is important, why you should invest in it along with tips to improve your B2B database. Let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
What is Data Enhancement?
Data enhancement, or data append, refers t the process of refining, enriching, and improving existing datasets with additional information.
This information can include contact details, demographics, firmographics, and geographic information, based on marketing needs. The goal is to enhance the quality and completeness of the data, enabling better insights and decision-making.
Data Enhancement Vs. Data Cleansing
When looking for data enhancement services, you may encounter terms such as data enrichment, data augmentation, data cleansing, and data hygiene. Although these phrases describe the overall state of your data, there are important distinctions to remember.
Data enrichment and data augmentation mean the same as data enhancement. It involves analyzing, cleaning, and filling gaps in customer data using external sources.
Data cleansing or data hygiene is the process of checking and fixing errors in your database. It can be either a standalone procedure, or a part of legitimate database enrichment process.
Key Reasons for Investing in Data Enhancement
Investing in data enhancement can be a game-changer for your business. Here are some compelling reasons why it’s worth considering:
- Time savings: Capturing data about your prospects organically, whether through a loyalty program, survey on your website, or something else, can be time consuming. Additionally, it provides little to no information about prospects that haven’t engaged with your brand yet. Data enhancement can give you that information almost instantly.
- Cost efficiency: By utilizing enhanced data, you reduce the likelihood of sending communications to email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses that won’t elicit a response. This is because the enhanced data is thoroughly verified for accuracy and responsiveness. As a result, your marketing efforts become more cost-effective, enabling you to allocate saved funds to other essential projects.
- Optimized internal records: Data enhancement does not replace your existing records; rather, it improves them. If you have internal records that aren’t currently serving your strategy, such as those that lack contact information, you can enhance such records and finally connect with those prospects.
- Growth opportunities: Data enhancement enables you to venture into a new market by offering valuable demographic, geographic, and contact information. This empowers you to proactively reach out to potential customers within that new segment. With access to insider knowledge, you can immediately kickstart your efforts instead of gradually building your network in the target area.
- Deeper customer insights: If you’re struggling to connect with your target audience, you may simply be failing to align with what truly motivates them to invest. Data enhancement helps improve new data for current customers. This allows you to determine the factors that lead to success for your team.
- Improved customer experience: By sending your audience personalized communications, you can enhance the customer experience. You’ll create marketing communications that are relevant and valuable, whether you communicate through their preferred channel or send opportunities they’re likely to be interested in.
With data enhancement, your team now has the right tools to identify and reach the right customers in your target group effectively. But it’s not as simple as getting new data and stopping there. Without a clear plan, your records might be all over the place and lack focus. Consider teaming up with a data quality management service provider to smoothen the data enhancement process and get the most out of your B2B database.
Let’s explore some essential tips to ensure your data enhancement efforts lead to success.
Top Data Enhancement Tips for Your B2B Database
Audit Your B2B database
Data enhancement, regardless of your goals or the information you seek, always results in the addition of new data to your database. If the database and its data are not well organized and maintained, improving the data will only worsen the problem. Additionally, it will be difficult to access and use the data in your strategy. It will also be difficult to access and use the data in your strategy.
Perform a thorough audit of your records before beginning any data enhancement efforts. An audit looks over your database and identifies inconsistencies like dirty data or missing information. This audit will:
- Give your team a realistic picture of where your data assets are right now and what discrepancies exist in your first-party data.
- Allow you to see which areas of your database require the most attention.
- Use the audit findings to fix database errors before adding new data. This could involve tasks like:
- Establishing uniformity for data such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, and more
- Suppressing irrelevant information that isn’t useful to your team
- Delete or combine redundant records into a single, coherent file
Correcting these issues before adding new information to your records will save you a lot of headaches in the future. However, it’s also crucial to keep in mind that organizing your records is an ongoing process and needs to be up to date.
Establish Data Cleansing Procedures
Implementing recurring data cleansing procedures is essential to maintain the accuracy and effectiveness of your B2B database through data enhancement. Even after a comprehensive database audit and clean-up, data can become jumbled as new information is added and first-party records are updated. To avoid the pitfalls of inaccurate data, which can cost American businesses a staggering 3.1 trillion dollars annually, consider the following steps:
- Data Scrubbing: Set up a schedule for regular data scrubbing. This process involves validating, standardizing, and correcting data entries to ensure consistency and accuracy. By cleansing your database periodically, you reduce the chances of incorrect information causing costly errors.
- Data Validation Tools: Leverage data validation tools to automatically verify and update contact information. These tools can check email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses against trusted databases, ensuring your communications reach the intended recipients.
- De-duplication: Implement a de-duplication process to eliminate duplicate entries from your database. Duplicate records not only waste resources but also lead to confusion and miscommunication with customers.
- Data Enrichment Continuation: Continue to enrich your database with relevant and up-to-date information. As your business grows, so should your dataset, and regular data enrichment ensures you have access to valuable insights for targeted marketing.
By implementing ongoing data cleansing procedures, you can continuously improve your B2B database through data enhancement.
Enhance Your B2B Data with a Focus on Your Marketing Objectives
Now, let’s talk about the role of data enhancement in enhancing your marketing efforts. When it comes to data, there’s a treasure trove of information about your audience, including things like age, travel habits, home ownership, credit score, and more. But here’s the thing – not all this data might be useful for your marketing strategy.
So, before diving in and enhancing data left and right, take a moment to carefully examine your marketing goals. Think about the specific information that can actually help you achieve those goals. By focusing on what you truly need and avoiding unnecessary data, you’ll not only save money on the enhancement process but also keep your database more relevant and streamlined. It’s all about being smart with data enhancement and using it to your advantage.
Partner With a B2B Data Provider
Lastly, consider partnering with a B2B Data provider with data enhancement and enrichment service offerings.
Outsourcing data enhancement process can lead to improved data quality and accuracy, as these companies have experience and expertise in handling different types of data.
In addition, B2B data providers such as Datamatics Business Solutions offer additional data improvement services. These services include data enrichment, personalized data and account profiling, and data accuracy. Utilizing these services can lead to better decision-making and comprehension. This can result in improved decision-making and understanding.
Conclusion
Elevating your B2B database and achieving business success through data enhancement requires a clear plan for data utilization. While implementing these enhancement tips can be transformative, incorporating vast amounts of data into your marketing strategy without a structured approach can be daunting. If you wish to avoid these pitfalls write to us at [email protected] and we can help you lay the foundation you need for your data enhancement success.
