7 WAYS TO HELP YOU MANAGE YOUR CUSTOMER DATA

Good data management is vital when client data is one of your company’s most valuable assets. But how certain are you that the information is healthy and of high quality?

Maintaining clean data might seem impossible, so it is ignored in favour of tasks considered more important or achievable. However, the detrimental effects of disregarding data housekeeping can be seen when there is an urgent issue or steadily deteriorating metrics. 

Here are seven suggestions inspired by data specialists Purple Square to assist you in maintaining the security, efficacy, and accuracy of your data.

1 PRIMARY KEY FIELD PRE-VALIDATION

Your marketing messages won’t reach their target audience if you don’t have appropriate contact information.

Validating this data before it enters your database is known as pre-validation for primary key fields. Any errors might result in duplicate records if these fields are used as identifiers for matching.

It’s also a good idea to validate before updating the database to avoid invalid data replacing accurate data after changing details.

What is a primary key?

The information needed to identify a record in a table specifically is called a primary key. One or more table columns may serve as the main key. Any information kept in a primary key field is specific to that record and cannot be found elsewhere in the database. Here are a few instances of primary key fields that you could encounter.

• Email address (where two customers cannot use the same email)
• Membership number
• Owner ID
• Tracking number

With Merlin Software, the main Primary Key that is unique to every name in the database is the client’s Merlin Name ID.  All data for the record links back to this ID, making Merlin extremely customer-centric.  In addition, we use various keys that trigger a warning that there may be a duplicated record. These are triggered when saving new Names to eliminate duplicates.

2 FREQUENTLY USED RULESETS SHOULD BE CONTROLLED AND PERMANENT

Whatever marketing automation solution you place over your data will probably be able to clean up the underlying data somehow.  It will then offer cleaner results for further selection or output through rules or preferences.

To reduce redundancy and assure consistency, it is also possible that there will be a templating component.

Making some of these calculations earlier and just displaying the final results to users for selection might be advantageous when the data comes from a single source and does not need to be real-time.

It will make it possible for any analysis or reporting to utilise the exact definition, even if it is pulled directly from the database. It will ensure that all users base their selections on the same tested and widely accepted definition.

Running those choices will also improve performance, albeit a longer processing time during the database refresh will offset the gain.

Merlin allows you to deduplicate your data using a variety of rules. In addition, the marketing automation in Merlin can prevent the same message from being repeatedly delivered to the same person and even exclude them from further communications should they respond positively to your marketing message.  This means someone who ultimately purchases from you will no longer receive your marketing messages encouraging them to purchase.

What is a ruleset?

Rulesets are the reusable marketing objects that specify your key logic and are intended to be utilised again. Examples include RFV (Recency, Frequency & Value) calculations that frequently establish the offer value to the customer and country and language logic for personalisation divided into multiple languages.

3 AUTOMATE CUSTOMER DATA QUALITY CONTROL WHERE POSSIBLE

Automation eliminates the manual labour necessary to ensure accuracy and guarantees consistency in approach – a tried-and-true Quality Control (QC) process. 

You could automate a few areas to help your quality control procedures.

• Monitor the values of key fields and keep an eye out for any unusual values to ensure the validation and cleaning processes in place are still working correctly.
• Configure tolerance alerts to tell you when values deviate from expectations, enabling prompt detection of issues with your database refresh procedure or the source data.

In Merlin, we check many fields to ensure that the data entered is correct.  Some of these include email addresses (they need to be correctly formatted) and telephone numbers (they need to be numbers and one telephone number per record).

4 PLAN AHEAD

You have a great chance to get things started on the right foot if you are engaged in a system’s first installation or migration.

Now is the time to consider logical naming practices, reducing the usage of special characters where it’s not essential, and eliminating spaces in file and folder paths.

It’s simple to skip this phase at the beginning of a project. However, it’s possible that the “let’s just get the system up and running, then we’ll work it out” approach will result in a system with unneeded inconsistencies and quirks introduced by initial users and ideas never intended to be permanent. This can happen as priorities change, and the later part of the process never occurs.

With Merlin Software, successfully transferring your data is the key to a successful installation. We have strict standards for onboarding new clients and their data.  It is their one chance to get messy data cleaned up.  Our team can assist in preparing the upload templates, which are created in Excel, and then uploaded to the system. This will only occur once we are happy that all the data is correct.

5 ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN A DATA DICTIONARY

Purple Square recommends that a comprehensive and current data dictionary—a fast reference manual for field definitions and values—is crucial to the ongoing operation of your system.

A trustworthy data dictionary may make a significant difference in assuring quality and accuracy over extended periods. However, the knowledge developed through the implementation may be lost when workers move across departments or leave your organisation.

As we use one database at Merlin Software, rather than each department using its own version of the data, we eliminate the need for most data dictionaries because the data is only entered once. Each data field is labelled clearly, again making it harder to get this wrong. Merlin also validates certain data fields, like email addresses, to ensure they are in the correct format. 

6 KEEP IT EASY TO USE AND SIMPLE

Not all data should be accessible to regular system users just because it is available. Instead, think about how to display just the data fields required to undertake the task or process.

The availability of fields or whole tables unnecessary for output, analysis, or selection serves little value. Indeed, including them might increase confusion and misuse risk.

Reduce the requirement for post-processing output data by integrating it, wherever possible, in an earlier database refresh cycle. Errors are more likely with data that has been manually edited.

With Merlin Software WebApps, we have managed to simplify many processes and workflows, only showing the data that the user needs to view or enter.

7 COMPLIANCE

Keeping your customer data clean and usable has always been crucial. However, the rules of GDPR and other regulations worldwide mean more emphasis and importance placed on compliance and protection than ever before.

Just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t make it right. Provide your users with the high-quality information and accompanying materials they need to ensure they understand what they are utilising and the legal justifications for doing so.

At Merlin Software, we continually ensure that our software complies with various countries’ data protection rules and regulations.  We work with our customers to ensure the software complies with all regulations in their country to keep their customer data safe at all times.

To find out more about Merlin Software and how your customer data is protected and compliant, contact Mark Thomas at markt@quickmerlin.com or arrange a free online demo today.