Data decay or degradation is an agonizing factor that turns Sales teams into ships without compasses. Even in the times of cutting edge CRMs and AI, data decay is a fact of life for big and small enterprises. As per leading credit reporting companies in the US, around 14% of revenue loss happens due to poor quality data.
Gartner’s report says that globally every month around 3% of data gets decayed. B2B data decay at a rate of 70.3% per year. Considering the decay that piles up over the years, in some cases even the customer base undergoes a near-total replacement. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions can work only in tandem with good quality data. Around 25 % of the average B2B database is inaccurate as per a finding by the advisory firm Sirius Decisions.
Read More: Reviving Retail With AI: 5 Benefits Of Adopting AI In Retail Operations
Logical Data Decay
An example of logical data decay is the dent in the Sales or Marketing database that occurs when customers change their phone numbers. Due to a variety of reasons around 18 percent of all telephone numbers change annually, says the B2B data management solutions firm Reachforce. The Sales teams which may have been tapping customers are left in shock when they go unreachable.
As per the studies done by Sales Marketing software manufacturer HubSpot, 22.5% percent of emails decay annually. The worst feeling for a seller is when the priced customer changes their location overnight and go untraceable. Around 20 percent of postal address changes annually. Apart from this is the data loss caused by employee turnover issue.
Minimize Decay by Investing in Smarter CRMs, Add a Personalized Touch
– Invest in smart CRM platforms that can validate the data of customers. This can spare Sales teams from the task of manually verifying names, emails, and locations.
– Use Data visualization tools that can give you a bird’s eye view of the rots.
– Frequently reach out to once tapped customers with automated Sales calls.
– Blast email and newsletter to keep customers in the loop. Remove hard bounces and suppress inactive email subscribers.
– Most importantly, personalize emails.
– Acquire CDMs that have features like bi-lateral Integration, on-demand verification, AI-supported deep verification and ability to maintain customer database accurately.
– Use CRM that can give last contact reports of those customers who are not in touch for a while.
Read More: How E-Signing Solutions Are Empowering SalesForce With Digitization And Agility
Mechanical Decay Easier to Control
The reason for you losing Sales data could be a simple mechanical failure like damaged servers or corrupted hard drives or even a cyber-attack. Manual errors also lead to data loss. Invest in an AI-enabled Cloud storage services. Many CDMs now come with the option for cloud storage at an additional cost.
As per data storage provider Backlaze, every five years, 50% of all data on hard drives are lost. Some drivers have an annual failure rate as high as 25.4%. Trustworthy storage solution by players like IBM and Pure storage can save your Sales data.
Read More: Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Is Your Growth Opportunity In 2019