For those of you who attended last week’s webinar, Marketing Automation and CRMs: Terrible Twosome or Dynamic Duo? (and for those of you who didn’t, you can find the recording here), you may remember a short discussion of the importance of keeping your database clean. It may seem like common sense, but many marketers overlook the benefits of a clean database, like the ability to cut down on SPAM complaints, or prevent email bounces due to the clutter of old or invalid email addresses. (If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of list cleaning, take a look at our post, “How to Keep Your Email Lists Sparkling Clean.”)
On the other hand, many marketers do understand the importance of a clean database, but don’t have the time or resources to take care of it themselves. For those time-strapped marketers, we offer you the list of database-cleaning resources below, recommended by Pardot’s very own Client Services Manager, Kathryn Honderd.
Fresh Address
Fresh Address helps companies build, update, segment, and clean their email lists. If you have a large database full of customer or prospect email addresses, but have found that you’re continually seeing bad bounce rates from invalid email addresses, Fresh Address can update your email database and replace any bad addresses with the correct ones, while also maximizing email deliverability and avoiding ISP blacklisting.
BriteVerify
If you’re looking for a low-cost email verification service (as well as a company with a sense of humor), try using BriteVerify. They offer on-demand, pay-as-you-go pricing so that you pay for exactly what you need. As they claim on their website, “At BriteVerify, we take verification seriously – in fact, making sure that you receive the most accurate information possible is pretty much the only thing that matters to us. Well, that and pancakes. Mmmmm… pancakes.”
Hoovers, A D&B Company
Hoovers offers a number of solutions for sales and marketing departments, a few of which are data cleansing and enrichment, list cleaning, and appending services. Maintain up-to-date information on all of your customers by using D&B to identify any duplicates in your database, correct company data, and enrich any existing records with information from their largest commercial database.
Data.com
With Data.com, you can access millions of top-quality D&B company profiles and Data.com contacts to get clean and current email addresses, contact information, and more. Using a tool like Data.com, you can ensure that you not only start with a clean database, but you also keep it maintained over time.
The Super Intern
While it may seem silly, Kathryn points out that an intern can be a great (and budget-friendly) resource for keeping your database clean. If you find that you don’t have time to pursue the task yourself, have your intern take it on as a personal project. Not only will they learn more about the importance of keeping your database clean, but they’ll also get more experience with the processes and work that goes into a clean database.
And there you go! If you’re looking for a way to keep that database of yours sparkling clean, try out one of the resources listed above to find one that best suits your specific needs and budget (Don’t see any that you like? Mailchimp also recommends LeadSpend and DataValidation.com). If you’d like to learn more about ways that you can increase the efficiency of your CRM and marketing automation system, check out the full recorded webinar for more information.
