The crucial role of data attribution in ensuring CRM health

Succeeding with outbound prospecting starts with accurate data. However, without the right tools in place, maintaining accurate data is easier said than done. 

Believe it or not, B2B contact data decays as much as 70.3% per year. So, if your company has a database full of 3,000 contacts in January, fewer than 900 of them will still be accurate when it’s time to call it a year.

Data decay is a massive problem for SaaS sales and marketing teams because it leads to inaccurate contact information, making outreach efforts less effective. As contacts change roles, companies pivot, and new players emerge, CRM data becomes outdated which results in wasted time and missed opportunities. Even worse, most CRM configurations don’t attribute a source to specific data points. As a result, it’s nearly impossible to identify where your data (good or bad) even came from to begin with, making CRM maintenance even more challenging. 

Luckily, by mastering data attribution and coupling it with other strategies, it’s possible to combat data decay and enhance CRM hygiene — and accelerate your prospecting efforts because of it.

What is data decay?

Data decay refers to the gradual deterioration of the accuracy and relevance of contact data over time. This occurs as a result of several factors, including:

• Job changes, where employees move to different roles within the company or join a different organization altogether
• Company restructuring — including mergers, acquisitions, and internal reorganization — which can render existing data obsolete
• Changes in phone numbers, email addresses, and other contact details

In today’s dynamic business environment, data decay comes with the territory. For this reason, organizations need to regularly update their data to maintain the effectiveness of their sales and marketing efforts.

How does data decay impact B2B companies?

Data decay impacts B2B companies by disrupting sales and marketing efforts. This makes perfect sense; outdated information leads to ineffective targeting and outreach.

When organizations are impacted by data decay, they miss opportunities since teams are unable to connect with key decision-makers or current contacts. Outreach to outdated emails can result in higher bounce rates that chip away at your sender score — increasing the likelihood that future emails to other prospects will be marked as spam. Making matters worse, using inaccurate data wastes resources, including time and marketing spend, ultimately reducing overall campaign effectiveness and return on investment.

Ways to combat the impacts of data decay

In an age where employees change jobs frequently, it can be difficult to eliminate the impacts of data decay entirely. That said, organizations can still combat the effects of data decay by using these four tactics.

1. Regular data audits

Conducting regular data audits can help your team identify and correct outdated or inaccurate information in your database. By systematically reviewing and updating records, you can ensure that your sales and marketing teams have access to the most current and reliable data — improving outreach efficiency and effectiveness.

2. Data enrichment

Data enrichment is the process of augmenting existing contact records with additional information like job titles, company details, recent news, and other public insights. This process enhances the completeness and accuracy of your data, giving reps a more comprehensive view of prospects while enabling more personalized and targeted outreach efforts. 

By enriching data with automated data cleaning tools, you can keep your records current and maintain solid CRM hygiene.

3. Third-party data providers

Utilizing third-party data providers gives you access to regularly updated and verified contact information. Such providers specialize in maintaining high-quality data, which can supplement your internal records and reduce the impact of data decay. 

As a result, your sales team always has the most accurate and relevant information at their fingertips — making it that much easier to crush their numbers.

4. Data governance policies

Drafting and enforcing robust internal company policies and best practices establishes clear guidelines for data management, including data entry, storage, and updating procedures. These policies help maintain data integrity, reducing the risk of decay while ensuring team members adhere to best practices for managing and preserving data quality.

Introducing data attribution

Another way to preserve CRM health is by prioritizing data attribution, which involves tracking and assigning the source of data to specific marketing and sales activities — thereby giving you a better idea of where each piece of data originated.

This, in turn, helps ensure CRM hygiene by helping you maintain accurate and reliable data, enabling better decision-making and more effective targeting. As an added bonus, data attribution allows for more precise data analysis and reporting, optimizing resource allocation and improving overall sales and marketing efficiency. 

What are the benefits of data attribution?

Accurate data attribution offers several key benefits to organizations, including:

• Updated and relevant information. Accurate data attribution ensures that contact details and customer insights in your CRM are current, reducing the risk of data decay and helping you maintain a reliable database.

• Improved lead scoring. Data attribution provides a clearer picture of which tools and  activities generate the most qualified leads. This enhances your ability to prioritize and focus on high-potential prospects.

• Tool evaluation. Clear attribution identifying the source of B2B contact information in your CRM allows your team to easily audit data and identify the most effective data providers and pipeline-generation strategies. 

Why isn’t data attribution more common?

Despite its benefits, data attribution is not always the easiest to implement.

For starters, tracking and maintaining accurate data sources can be complex, requiring tools and processes capable of capturing touchpoints in the customer journey. At the same time, many organizations struggle to consistently integrate data from various channels, leading to fragmented and unreliable data sets.

On top of this, not all organizations have the level of integrations required throughout their tech stack to allow for consistent data attribution, and few data providers have built-in features to enable data attribution. Because of these common limitations, many organizations miss the massive benefits that data attribution has to offer. 

Thankfully, though, LeadIQ is working to change that. 

How LeadIQ’s Integrations Log helps

With all this in mind, we’re thrilled to introduce LeadIQ’s Integrations Log, a new feature that gives you complete transparency for all CRM updates performed by LeadIQ. Using the Integrations Log, you can increase data accuracy, streamline troubleshooting, enhance user management, and maintain data hygiene — all in one convenient location. 

With the Integrations Log, you get access to crystal-clear data attribution. As a result, you’ll know exactly where your data comes from with detailed export logs — ensuring impeccable data hygiene, and better sales outcomes because of it. Plus, with everything in one place, data audits and quality evaluations are much easier.

Whenever LeadIQ updates your CRM, our platform automatically tracks and displays that information in our Integrations Log, along with timestamps of who made the updates. This enables managers to quickly review and report on LeadIQ user activities and make informed updates to their CRM integration governance settings if needed. In turn, this gives you the information needed to ensure that your CRM stays up-to-date and reliable, reducing the risk of outdated data thwarting your sales and marketing efforts. 

Keep your CRM data up-to-date & reliable with LeadIQ!

Outbound prospecting excellence is only possible with accurate data. 

By addressing data decay through data audits, data enrichment, third-party data providers, and data governance policies, you can improve the reliability of your data. Add robust data attribution capabilities from LeadIQ on top of that, and your data is golden.

To learn more about the easiest way to maintain clean and accurate data and achieve successful B2B sales and marketing outcomes, request a demo of LeadIQ today.