Here’s a 10-minute introduction to my data cleaning process.  Using Microsoft Excel to semi-automate the process, here’s how I clean and code my marketing data for more effective marketing campaigns, better segmentation and successful lead nurturing.

Why should you bother cleaning your marketing data?  Is your Salesforce.com data quality really important?   SiriusDecisions estimates that companies can generate nearly 70% more revenue simply by improving the quality of their marketing data.  There’s a quantifiable waterfall effect: more leads get qualified and faster, sales follow up rates increase, more sales are closed.  Incremental improvements add up fast.

Even if you use a professional list cleaning service for data appending, updating or national change of address corrections, investing the time to do your own data cleaning and coding updates dramatically increases the value of CRM systems like Salesforce.com or NetSuite and marketing automation systems like Eloqua, Vtrenz, or Pardot.

With this quick, easy cleaning process you can enjoy the benefits of good data quality without long hours of tedious record-by-record data cleaning.  If you’d like more detailed instructions, check out Double the Value of Your Marketing Data, a new ebook from ChickBiz Publishing.

And this is the perfect project for the end of the year.   Thanksgiving week and the week after Christmas are ideal times to clean your data if you have the bad luck to be stuck in the office and not taking vacation.  Everything is quiet; there are few interruptions.  It’s the perfect time to get your data ready for the new year.  Good luck!

Sales teams can use codes to enhance their prospecting approach. With the right information available, they can approach the right prospects at the right time in the right way. The reps will know which products to pitch. They can intelligently refer to recent marketing communications the prospect has received, and they will know what interest the prospect may have already shown.

Common Types of Marketing Segmentation Codes

• Lead/list source – where the lead/name originated
• Product interest – what product or service the person is interested in
• Demographic or psychographic data – personal details about the lead/prospect
• Campaign codes – how you have marketed to the person in the past
• Scoring & trigger codes –identify how and when you should follow up
• Sales milestones – make it easier to coordinate sales and marketing communications
• Aging codes – help you assess the freshness of your list

Excerpted from “Double the Value of Your Marketing Data,” a new ebook from ChickBiz Publishing written by Katherine Chalmers .

Let’s be honest: improving data quality is not a sexy or high-profile marketing project.  It can be pretty boring and is usually ignored. But getting your marketing data into a clean, optimized state can have more impact on your company’s bottom line than almost any single lead generation program.

Studies show that most marketing leads are wasted. Aberdeen Group reports that only 20% of marketing leads are ever followed up by sales reps but about 80% of ignored prospects will go on to purchase from someone within 24 months.   If you have clean, well-organized, accurately coded data, marketing can nurture those ignored leads until they are ready to buy.

Good data has a measurable bottom line impact.  A recent report from SiriusDecisions estimates that companies can generate nearly 70% more revenue simply by improving the quality of their marketing data.   There’s a quantifiable waterfall effect: more leads get qualified and faster, sales follow-up rates increase, more deals close. Incremental improvements can add up fast—especially when they are compounded.

Bad data keeps costing you money. According to Johnathan Block, SiriusDecisions senior director of research, “The longer incorrect records remain in a database, the greater the financial impact. This point is illustrated by the 1-10-100 rule: It takes $1 to verify a record as it’s entered, $10 to cleanse and de-dupe it and $100 if nothing is done, as the ramifications of the mistakes are felt over and over again.”

The bottom line: good data equals good business.

Excerpted from “Double the Value of Your Marketing Data,” a new ebook from ChickBiz Publishing written by Katherine Chalmers .

• What kinds of leads should you target?
• What do you need to know about those leads?
• What will you do with leads after you generate them? email newsletters?  direct mail campaigns?  telemarketing?
• What systems and software will you be using to manage the data?

Each marketing decision significantly impacts the data fields you will need to successfully implement your marketing plan.  If you take a little time to understand what information your sales and marketing team will need throughout the prospecting and selling cycles, the marketing data management system you develop will be much more effective.

Excerpted from “Double the Value of Your Marketing Data,” a new ebook from ChickBiz Publishing written by Katherine Chalmers .

Too much B.S.?

Yes, it’s easy to get carried away when writing sales letters or marketing collateral.  When the engineers stir in lots of jargon and acronyms, then the boss embellishes with extra adjectives, the B.S. level can get out of control.  Luckily, there’s a handy, objective tool to help shovel the you-know-what out of their marketing copy.

Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky, authors of the book Why Business People Speak Like Idiots have made available Deloitte Consulting’s infamous “Bullfighter.”  This freeware plug-in for Microsoft Word analyzes your marketing copy then calculates a Flesch Reading Ease score and a Bull Index score.  Once you know your scores, you can adjust your copy as needed.

Download Bullfighter 1.2 here:
http://www.fightthebull.com/bullfighter.asp

Here are the fundamental areas of expertise that companies typically require for developing an effective Web site. First, evaluate what skill sets are available to you within your company. Then, you can establish clear vendor selection criteria based on the supplemental skills you need.

Strategic Marketing
A strong marketing strategy should guide all other aspects of your Web development process. It does not matter how lovely the graphic design is or how many clever features the site has if it does not clearly communicate your company’s fundamental brand messages and the benefits you offer customers. For maximum effectiveness and the highest return on your Web development investment, your Web marketing program should integrate with and support your overall marketing effort.

Graphic Design
The look and feel of your Web site is important. Ideally, it should not only be professional and attractive, but also blend with your offline collateral and other corporate materials. High quality graphic design is one of the best marketing investments small and mid-size companies can make. Quality design enhances a company’s credibility and the perceived quality of its products and services.

Web Design and User Interface Planning
Great graphic design is useless if the graphics are not well-adapted to the technical requirements of the Internet and the information on the site is poorly organized. It is important to plan how visitors will experience your site. Good Web design ensures that your pages load quickly and correctly across different types of Internet connection and browser combinations. Effective user interface planning ensures that visitors find the information they need quickly and easily.

Programming
Developers’ programming skills vary widely. Some firms offer only basic HTML and CGI scripting services. Others can provide custom application development, e-commerce implementation, and complex database programming. More is not always better where programming is concerned. Developers at both ends of the programming skills spectrum can create effective Web sites. It is the complexity of the features your site requires that will determine what level of programming expertise you require.

Copy Writing
You will need content for every page on your site — someone will have to write it! You can write it yourself. You can adapt offline marketing materials for some of the copy you will need. You can hire a writer to create all the copy you need from scratch.

Customer Service
You should feel comfortable with your Web vendors. It is entirely reasonable for you to expect them to explain the major aspects of your project in terms you can understand. Make sure you understand what is to be done and why each part of the project is important. There is a lot of competition in the market. If your vendor won’t deliver excellent service, there are plenty of others who will.

1) Pre-Show Marketing
Let people know you will be exhibiting at the show! Put a promo for the show, including your booth number, on your company home page. If possible, get a copy of the pre-registered attendee list. A postcard mailing to attendees about three weeks before the show is a cost-effective way to let people know who you are and where you will be. Sponsoring a contest or prize drawing at the show and promoting it on the postcard is a popular way to attract booth visitors. If you have an opt-in email list of your clients and prospects, you can send a digital postcard.

2) Pre-Show Selling
Trade shows offer an excellent opportunity for salespeople to meet customers and prospects. Many shows provide free admission tickets for exhibitors to distribute. Your sales team can invite their best customers and prospects to the show and offer them the free admission tickets. Also, have the team review the pre-registered attendee list. This allows them to identify promising prospects and to book appointments to meet with them at the show.

If you can prearrange multiple sales meetings to take place at the show, you can potentially save thousands of dollars in travel expenses and still have the benefit of face-to-face contact. Make sure you have some seating in your booth and plenty of coffee or soda for these meetings. If you expect to have many on-site meetings, consider adding a small meeting room to your booth. A 10′ × 20′ booth space can accommodate a comfortable meeting room without sacrificing too much exhibit space. Another alternative is to rent a meeting room off the show floor or in the hotel for these meetings. Meetings at these locations are more difficult to schedule, but the locations are more conducive to longer, in-depth meetings.

3) Pre-show (and On-site) Public Relations
Most trade shows and many conferences offer a wealth of press opportunities. Industry journalists frequently attend and report on major shows. If you request the list of pre-registered journalists from exhibitor relations, you or your public relations firm can try to schedule appointments to participate in media interviews at the show. Also, if you have any company news in the weeks before the show, you might consider delaying your news release and making your announcement at the show. Make sure to put your press kits in the show’s press room.

4) Pre-show Training
Is your booth staff trained to talk about your products and your company? Can they clearly explain your value proposition and the features and benefits of your product? Are they comfortable talking to strangers in a crowded exhibit hall? Use role-playing exercises to practice answering the most common questions the staff will encounter at the show. Also, make sure they completely understand how to collect business cards or swipe the badges of show attendees who are interested in your product.
Now that you have collected your leads, do not forget to follow up promptly within two to three weeks of the show. It is very easy to let this slide as your sales and marketing team members try to catch up on the work that accumulates while they are out of town at the show. Once again, pre-show planning can make a difference. You can even plan and prepare your follow-up campaign before the show.

A well-executed public relations program is one of the most cost effective promotion programs a bootstrapping company can select – especially when implemented with support from inexpensive targeted direct marketing (email, postcards, and sales letters) and an integrated Web marketing program. In addition to helping build buzz about your company and products, a good PR campaign fuels Web traffic and generates fresh content for your Web site, collateral, and direct marketing pieces. The individual elements certainly don’t have to cost a fortune, but together they deliver much more bottom line value than any single effort.

It is true that working with a traditional PR firm can seem expensive. The minimum monthly fee for many firms that accept startup clients is around $5,000. This typically buys a few hours of consulting from an experienced account executive who manages your program and weekly editorial calendar monitoring and story pitching by a junior associate. Once your startup can afford a $5,000-$10,000 monthly retainer, a good public relations agency can offer outstanding value for your marketing program. Until then, here are a few tips for building your PR program on a tight budget:

1) Do it Yourself via Custom Targeting
Public relations isn’t rocket science and you don’t have to pitch every publication in the known universe to be effective. Target a set of 10-75 publications that cover your market segment and create your own press list. Read the most important publications regularly and familiarize yourself with the editors and reporters who cover stories in your industry. Visit the advertising sales sections of the publications’ Web sites to find their editorial calendars, lists of the features they are planning for upcoming issues. You can use these to pitch yourself as a resource or send relevant product information to the reporters working on stories related to your business.

When you have news, send each reporter on your press list a copy of your press release – call the most important contacts to make sure they received it and to ensure that you’re sending it to the right person. You can also distribute it via a wire service – the two major ones are PR Newswire and BusinessWire. You have to pay a nominal fee to join these services and a fee for each press release they distribute for you. Both services offer flexible programs to meet your distribution requirements. They also host regular “meet the journalist” events that are quite informative and help you get to know journalists in your geographic area. Business Wire’s Web site has exhaustive lists of the publications in their distribution circuits. This can be a very helpful resource for building your own press list.

Initially, bootstrapping your public relations program is a very time consuming process, but if you establish good systems you can manage it eventually.

2) Do it Yourself with Professional PR Tools
For roughly the cost of two or three months’ of public relations firm retainer fees you can subscribe to the press contact and editorial calendar resources that PR professionals use. Bacon’s and Lexis-Nexis both offer large databases of press contacts and editorial calendars. PR Newswire’s ProfNet service will email journalist info requests directly to you several times a day. Using professional tools obviously costs more than the complete bootstrapping approach, but it gives your PR program more reach, allows you to pitch stories more professionally, and takes much less time to manage. I used this technique quite successfully to generate quite a lot of press coverage for a small company in Silicon Valley. Working diligently a little each day resulted in press mentions in Time, CNN, The San Jose Mercury News, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, and many regional and trade publications.

3) Find an Independent PR Consultant
Hiring a freelance PR professional is an excellent way to build a high quality public relations program with a smaller budget. Many freelancers are senior PR professionals with agency experience. Since they do not have the same overhead costs as the large PR firms, they can charge less for services. If your budget precludes even this option, you might find an independent consultant may at least be willing to develop a press kit and press list for you and periodically send you an editorial calendar opportunity list. You’ll save a bundle if you do your own editorial calendar pitching. Even if you decide to have the consultant do the pitching, you can save time and money by previewing the editorial calendars list and using your expertise in your industry to help target the most promising opportunities and eliminate the less promising ones. (Make sure the consultant has subscriptions to professional tools similar to the recommendations in #2.) You might have to shop around to find someone who is willing to offer bare bones services like this, but keep looking they’re out there.

4) Benefit from Other People’s Public Relations
Be sure to leverage you clients’ and partners’ PR resources. If you do a joint release, work with their PR firm to help get the message out. Many companies – especially other startups – are hungry for regular news and press coverage. Help their marketing and PR teams get coverage and it can help you, too.

5) Submit Your Own Material
Write articles in your area of expertise and give presentations to conferences that have press coverage. The more visible you are, the more likely a reporter will contact you for information. Make sure you put your press kit in the media room at each conference or trade show where you speak or exhibit.