5 Step

Data Fitness Plan

Getting your data in the best shape to fill your
pipeline takes dedication, commitment, and a
training plan. Here are five steps to get you
moving on the path towards data fitness.
Contents

How fit is your sales and marketing data?............................................... 3

Step 1 - BASELINE: Establish your data’s current health ..................... 6
Step 2 - STRETCH: Clean your dirty data ............................................... 8
Step 3 - ENRICH: Supplement data deficiencies .................................. 9
Step 4 - BOOST: Fortify data by adding new prospects ..................... 10
Step 5 - POWER: Pump data into sales engagements ........................ 12
Maintaining your data’s ongoing fitness .................................................. 13

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Is your sales and marketing data in good enough shape to meet your pipeline numbers?
You may not think about your data in terms of fitness, but it’s
time you start taking care of the data that takes care of you.
Think about how much you rely on your sales and marketing
data to drive your business. You expect it to give you enough
information to identify new prospects, pinpoint the right
contacts, qualify potential leads, nurture promising opportu-
nities, find connections for referrals, and so much more. And
that’s just during the sales and marketing process!
This data—what’s referred to as market intelligence—stands
between you and your revenue growth.
Since you’re relying on your data to do so much, are you also
keeping it in shape? Is it ready to go the distance? If your data
is in tip-top shape, like a professional athlete, then you can stop
reading here. But if it’s more like Bob from accounting, who
plays basketball twice a year, then read on.
How fit is your sales
and marketing data?
You wouldn’t expect someone to run a marathon if they’ve
spent the past year sitting on the couch, nor would you expect
them to perform well in a 100-meter sprint. If they haven’t kept
themselves in shape, their performance will be weak. If you
don’t build your muscles and you don’t train, then you can’t be
expected to perform at an acceptable level.
The same goes for your data. You can’t expect to neglect your
data and still have it perform well month-after-month, year-after-
year. Company and contact data gets flabby. It gets old. It loses
its abilities. It falls behind the competition.
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How come your data gets out of shape?

In the U.S. alone, 543,000 new businesses pop up each So, if you haven’t cleaned or diagnosed your data in more
month, according to Forbes! than twelve months, you’re in trouble.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that over 2.7 million If you think your data is fine as is, you should reconsider.
people quit their jobs each month. Add to that the number of SiriusDecisions found that the average B2B database is 25
internal role changes, company relocations and expansions, percent inaccurate at any given time. Chances are, every
corporate and personal name changes, and more, and you’ll fourth contact in your database has a bad email address, an
understand why business data changes so often. incorrect title, a wrong phone number, or doesn’t even work at
the same company.
This all translates into somewhere between 2 and 5 percent
per month of company and contact data decaying for typical
B2B companies, according to several studies from Marketing-
Profs, Biznology, and others. Without intervention, as much as
70 percent of your data can be incorrect after a year.

Without intervention, as much as

70 percent of your data can
be incorrect after a year.

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Get your data off of the couch
Just like getting yourself in shape, getting your data in shape takes dedication, commitment, and a training plan. It’s not easy to embark
on such a journey, and it might seem overwhelming when you look at the current state versus your ultimate goals. In many cases, it
helps to have a personal trainer to keep you motivated, moving forward, and taking the right steps. In lieu of a personal trainer for your
data, here are five simple steps to get you on the path towards data fitness.

Don’t make excuses. Start today with these five easy steps. Here we go!

BASELINE:
1. Establish your data’s current health to better understand what to expect and how hard to push.

2. STRETCH:
Clean your dirty data so that it’s ready to perform and doesn’t hold back your campaigns.

3. ENRICH:
Supplement data with what’s missing to avoid deficiencies and stay energized.

4. BOOST:
Fortify data by adding fresh pathways to new prospects.

5. POWER:
Add more weight to your data to increase your ability to engage with leads.

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1. BASELINE: Establish your data’s current health
The first step towards a healthy database is determining your
starting point. This is key. It will show you where you need
the most focus and give you insight into why your past
performance was what it was.
Consider this like hopping on the scale before you begin
a diet or timing a one-mile run on the first day of your new
exercise routine. You want to know your starting point so
you can measure your improvements over time and deter-
mine how much more effort it will take to reach your goals.
For example, you may find that your company data is fine,
but that contact data needs help. Or that accuracy is good,
but that you don’t have enough contacts in your target indus-
tries or at your target titles. Or that the data you have is OK,
but that too many records are incomplete. Again, establishing
your baseline can shed some light on your past and tell you
where to focus.

PRO TIP Benchmark a sample set of data to understand just how out-of-shape your data really is.
You can use an automated service, survey your sales reps to understand how often they
run into bad data, or look at your marketing email bounce-back rates.

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Case Study: Getting their data in shape increased conversions by 68%
Zuora, which develops a next-generation commerce platform for subscription-based
companies, found that their incomplete and inaccurate company and contact data was
slowing their conversions of leads to opportunities, and preventing them from
reaching their revenue goals. By cleaning their existing data, and ensuring that new,
incoming data was validated for accuracy and completeness, they were able to
increase their lead-to-opportunity conversion rates by 68%!

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2. STRETCH: Clean your dirty data
Before you start any big campaign or program, you’ll want to
be sure your data is ready. Cleaning helps you identify and
correct dirty data, remove duplicates, and complete missing
fields. But, just like stretching before exercise, it has to
become a routine. For your data, that means scheduling
regular updates, at least twice a year after the initial
cleaning, but quarterly is even better.
Data decay happens because people and businesses are
constantly changing. For example, the frequency at which
people change jobs is shocking. At some larger companies
the median employee tenure is well below 18 months,
according to a report from Payscale. Companies like Google
(1.1 year median tenure) or Ross Stores (1.2 years) or New
York Life Insurance (1.4 years) see a lot of turnover,
so the people filling the roles you’re targeting are moving
around more than you might expect.
year. Or look at some higher-profile companies that have
recently made changes that can impact your targeting, like
HP’s recent split in two or Humana acquiring Aetna. It’s
never-ending, and it impacts every industry. Even if it
happens slowly, it adds up to weak results for your sales and
marketing campaigns.
The risk of dirty data is obvious: you’re sending the wrong
message to the wrong person, or to no one at all. Sending a
finance-specific message to someone in human resources
will fall flat. Sending a manager message to someone who is
now a VP is worse. Targeting accuracy improves your
results. When you’re hitting all of the target’s hot buttons,
your message will resonate. Clean data is your first step
towards ensuring that you know who your targets are and
you hit them with the right message.

Companies are also popping up, going under, being ac-

quired, changing names, and more. Just looking at smaller
companies, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that about
520,000 new businesses open and 680,000 close each

PRO TIP 1 – 10 – 100: THE MULTIPLYING COST OF DIRTY DATA

Getting fit begins with getting off of the couch. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes. The same is true
with your data. As incorrect records remain in your database, they become more expensive to deal with. Data
scientists refer to this as the 1-10-100 rule: It takes $1 to verify a record as it is entered, $10 to cleanse and
de-dupe it, and $100 if nothing is done, due to lost opportunities and wasted resources.

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3. ENRICH: Supplement data deficiencies

Even the best athletes like to enrich their diets with vitamins,
wheatgrass, and green tea extract. Rocky Balboa made it
cool to drink raw eggs in the 80s, but today’s pros look to
supplement their diets directly with the essentials, like fish
oil, probiotics, and antioxidants.
Just like these supplements enrich your diet, your intake of
data benefits from enrichment as well. Data enrichment lets
you fill in the blanks of your contact data. If you have con-
tact names, email addresses, and company names, that data
can be enriched with mailing address, industry, proper title,
phone number, and dozens of other fields.
Enrichment also lets you reduce the number of fields a lead
is forced to complete on an online form. Multiple studies
show that reducing the number of fields on a web form
increases conversions, with some showing that a reduction
from 4 or more fields to just 2 or 3 fields can double
conversion rates. Instead of scaring away leads with a stack
of blank fields, reduce that to just a few and use a data
enrichment service to add the remaining data. Some services
even do it on the fly, so the record is enriched almost
instantly.
Just as in Step 2, more granular data helps you better target
your leads with the right message hitting the right person.

PRO TIP Enrich your data by filling in missing fields as new leads come in. It not only helps you connect with
the right targets, it helps you target more accurately and effectively by having more data for each of
your contacts.

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 4. BOOST: Fortify data by adding new prospects

It’s dull when you have a boring fitness routine that follows
the same cycle every day. It might seem obvious, but you
can boost your mood and your energy by changing it up.
This can be applied to your data, too. You can boost its
performance by adding new prospects that are accurate,
up-to-date, and just right for your business.
Buying contact lists has long been a risky move. Much of the
data is stale, many of the email addresses don’t work, and
the legitimacy and original source of the data is sometimes
suspect. Like the too-good-to-be-true exercise machines you
see on late-night television, it just doesn’t work. Why do you
think most list vendors give you free replacement data for
email bounce-backs? Because it happens so frequently!
Get new data from a reputable vendor who uses methods
that ensure accurate, current contacts. Data that’s 30 or 40
percent bad only serves to frustrate your marketing team
and elevate your spam scores.
Also, instead of just buying bulk data from anyone, look for
vendors who can offer highly-targeted lists of new prospects
that fit your ideal customer profile and will expand your total
addressable market (TAM). In other words, you don’t just
want more targets, you want more of the right targets for
your business, and that means filtering by granular criteria
that precisely matches your desired lead profile. You’re not
looking for just, say, 10,000 human resources professionals;
you want a list of human resources directors and above,
at companies with more than 500 employees, on the West
Coast, but not in the financial services industry.
It comes down to quality over quantity. Getting several hun-
dred quality, highly targeted contacts is immensely better
than getting thousands of stale, minimally targeted names
that could hurt your efforts more than help.

PRO TIP Frequently add new data to keep your database fresh. It’s easy to find a list vendor, but most offer the
same as the latest fitness product on late night TV: empty promises and an empty wallet. Get fresh
data from a reputable vendor who has accurate and relevant data that truly expands your total
addressable market.

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Case Study: Adding new data fueled their revenue growth
TopOPPS, one of the fastest-growing sales automation solutions, knew early on
that fresh data was crucial to fortifying their lead-to-revenue journey. Without
augmenting their lead data, they wouldn’t be able to hit their revenue goals.
Supplementing their data with market intelligence from the very beginning,
TopOPPS was able to source 65 percent of new leads and 61 percent of new
opportunities from outside of their in-house database.

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5. POWER: Pump data into sales engagements

Exercise helps you burn the flab, but you also want to build a
bit of muscle in the process.
Give your team the extra power they need to win through
relevant business insights, like breaking news on companies
they’re pursuing or coworkers’ connections to the
decision-makers they’re trying to reach. You’re not trying to
be a bodybuilder; you’re just looking to improve your game
a bit. Every little bit helps.
Pushing to go that extra lap is what gives you the edge and
helps you improve your performance. Michael Phelps was
known to swim over 50 miles per week during peak training,
but he also added targeted drills that improved his speed
and form. It worked, obviously, helping him win a record 18
gold medals over three Olympiads.
In sales and marketing, your edge is having those additional
insights that help you engage at the right time, more quickly,
and more effectively than your competitors.
For example, getting an alert that a promising lead just
announced significant financial news can prompt a timely
call in which you can offer relevant assistance. It’s that type
of intelligence that leads to tighter engagement. The lead
will know that you’re deeply educated on them, their busi-
ness, and their industry.
It’s what will separate you from the pack and help
you win.

PRO TIP Focus on building strength and power where it matters, and that means adding insights
that help your sales reps engage, compete, and win. Knowing who to call on is just the
first step. Knowing who they are, what their business needs, and where they’re feeling
pain puts you in the lead.

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Maintaining your data’s ongoing fitness
Just like your own fitness regimen, keeping your data fit won’t happen with just an occasional workout. You’ll need to consistently cycle
through steps 2 through 5 to keep your data in tip-top shape. Here are a few more tips to think about:

Clean your data at least twice
per year. Quarterly is even better.
Remember that data decays at
about 5 percent per month, so it’s
getting dirtier every day, even if
you’re doing everything else.
Enrich new leads as they come in.
Don’t let incomplete leads sit in your
database for months. Add missing data
as leads arrive, and reduce the
number of fields on your forms to
increase conversions.
Add new targets for every
campaign. Specifying your targets
will not only help you get more leads,
it helps you craft a tighter message
that better aligns with your audience.
Put news, social, financial, and
more insights to work in every
campaign and deal. It’s your
path to true 1:1 messaging, and it
sends a signal to every lead that
you care enough about them and
their time to be informed.

InsideView can help you start today!

InsideView helps sales and marketing organizations of all sizes find and connect with the right
prospects. InsideView’s market intelligence platform can enable you to get fit, so you can easily
identify and engage with prospects and customers.

415-728-9300 insideview.com

There’s no better time to get in shape. Now get moving!

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