By Victoria Dyke on Tue 08 October 2013 in CRM
As we are being told more and more not to ‘sell’, it is clear that data is becoming an even more crucial part of our B2B sales and marketing strategies.
‘Our databases are now the roadmap for B2B marketing as it is the recorded history of the customer relationship’ stated Ruth Stevens from Columbia Business School.
So what do we need to do to keep our data in good shape?
Clearly our data needs to be kept up to date. B2B data degrades much faster than B2C data (somewhere around 6% per month!). Keeping up to date with job titles, decision maker names, revenue and sales figures, industry and even the number of employees all become essential in targeting.
As our marketing becomes more intelligent, starting with segmenting our audience and sending them interesting and relevant messages, we need to have the information stored efficiently, ready to segment in the first place.
Managing data in a B2B environment is not easy. To make it easier think about storing all your information in once location. Integrating your systems to create a centralised database of up to date information can turn a contact into client.
We have been discussing the difficult task of managing data for years and it will be a topic covered at our next event on 7th November in Birmingham.