How to keep your client list clean?

Clean client lists are the ether on which the marketing ecosystem thrives…. Its an indisputable fact that businesses are not built by using technology – they are built on relationships and the start point to a great relationship is knowing who you are dealing with.

A clean client list makes a great start to your relationship as a business with your client.

In detail!

I mentioned this in an earlier post as well….

Every single data point regarding your customer which has a bearing on your business MUST be part of the clean client list the businesses should maintain. Say, for example, you are in the tutoring business and  you have a list of about 3000 contacts you have created with your marketing initiatives. You may have been in business for about 2 years and have experienced a steady growth in the last few months. I am certain you can attribute it to the great list of engaged people who value your service and offering.

Are you certain that this list is going to serve you well in the future as well. The reason I ask this is because with time, people and their taste also change. A single male could probably spend hours on the training you offer, but once he is in a relationship, has a new kid or is nearing a life altering event, his interests in your offering might change. What does a business then do to keep on top of this ever changing landscape?

List hygiene is the key here.

Keep your contacts list upto date and current AND clean.

How do you do that?

1. Deduplicate your client list.

It’s common to have multiple entries for the same person in your contact list. This is a direct result of multiple avenues we use in our marketing mix to attract and retain our client. Its also true if you have staff who are not so good with maintaining databases. When clients change their information, they can sometimes end up in your customer relationship management (CRM) database twice. It might appear as relatively harmless, but if you’re trying to build a comprehensive profile of your client, it’s kryptonite. Maintaining an accurate history of their relationship with you means it’s essential to keep your contact list free of duplicates.

Remember though that simply deleting duplicates could erase useful information such as conversation or payment histories, so use caution when doing this. Merge the duplicate contacts instead, so you consolidate the entries and don’t accidentally delete anything important.

2. Review your unengaged client list.

Evolution of our choices is something which we like and so do our clients. If you’ve got clients you haven’t heard from in a while, take a look and see who you want to keep in your list and who you can scrub. Unengaged, or non marketable clients can cost you valuable time, especially if you’ve been regularly marketing to them.

A large number of unengaged clients skews our campaign results, and we end up thinking our campaigns need reworking. And guess what? That takes time, which is better spent running your business. Removing consistently inactive clients helps clean up your contact list and saves you time.

Depending upon your business, you need to decide when a contact moved to an unengaged status. Its varies from business to business and you need to take a call on it, or have a chat with people in the same space. Pull reports to help you identify who’s engaging with your campaigns and who isn’t. As you go through them, make note of clients who haven’t opened any campaigns recently. Decide if you want to flag the ones who didn’t look at the last several campaigns, for example, or all campaigns during a 12-month period. How large a timeframe you want to look at is up to you.

A re-engagement campaign to win back unresponsive clients is a often a great way to get the relationship restarted.. To increase the likelihood of a reply, sweeten it with an incentive to come back and see what they’ve been missing!

3. Group your contacts into easily segmented client lists.

If you want to proactively clean up your client contact list, segmentation is your friend. Start by asking yourself what traits set some of your clients apart from others. For example, say you own a women’s clothing and accessories store. If you have a group of customers who love handbags, add a tag to their profiles in your CRM. Then you can easily send them alerts when you’re running a sale and watch your handbags fly off the shelf!

Other ways to segment are by demographic, purchase history, or hobby. There are tons of possibilities. This is a key trait of a good CRM – it allows you to tag people the way you would want them to be segmented. Do remember though to keep custom tags consistent across the client list, so we don’t end up with multiple variations of one single tag.

Make segmentation a part of your strategy, and you’ll notice improved client engagement. This takes the guesswork out of marketing to them and makes it more likely they’ll buy from you.

4. Make your client list mobile.

Have you ever needed to add a client to your contact list and weren’t able to because you weren’t in front of your computer? Maybe you were onsite with a client and they mentioned they had a referral for you. So where did you jot it down?

Making a simple form to put client details from a Mobile are absolutely ESSENTIAL for businesses today. Its fast and simple and feeds into a CRM. You can think of endless possibilities once you have a contact in your database – primed to be reached depending upon the interest.

Look for a CRM that not only allows you to input client information on demand but also lets you filter and sort when you need to find something. Taking your contact list everywhere means less likelihood potential leads will get lost or be incomplete.

5. Practice good data entry habits.

The key to a robust and contact list is undoubtedly the person who puts it together. And if you have multiple staff members who help you do this, train them to not make mistakes. Set the example by filling out as many fields as possible when adding new clients to your contact list. If your CRM allows for custom fields, add any you feel are relevant to your business. The more information you have about your clients, the better the experience you’ll provide them.

It’s also a good idea to go through and clean up your client contact list periodically — two to three times a year is a good benchmark to keep it organized and clutter-free

If you need to hear more about how this can be achieved using a good CRM, don’t hesitate to reach out.

To a remaining 2020…. Its going to be over!