CRMs used to be expensive and largely unavailable, but along with the rise of the internet, they have rocketed to become the largest tech market of the decade. Every business, whether a start-up or freelancer or global corporation, needs a system that collects data to improve efficiency. 

However, it’s vital to choose the right CRM for your company – it’s a big investment that will help define your success. So what exactly should you look out for? 

1. Compatibility with existing software. Whether you’re adding your CRM to a Mac or Windows PC, it’s important to check that the new software is compatible with what you already have. 
2. Ensure it meets your needs. Not all businesses face the same challenges. What data are you hoping to collect, and which features will make that possible? For example, would you like to create more leads, or simply become more efficient overall? 
3. Find the right price. Due to the rise in popularity and importance of CRMs, the market is extremely competitive, resulting in lower prices overall. Available models range in price from free to $3000 per month. When choosing your CRM, make sure to pick one that is within your budget and has the specific features you need. 
4. Ease of use. Before you’re sold on a CRM, it’s vital to check that the program is easy to master. Employees may fail to fill out or skip using a complex program, and you’ll lose data integrity. Whether you’re a freelancer or an HR Manager, trying to figure out a complex CRM will only slow you down and cost you money. 
5. Provider support. Look out for providers that offer training and implementation and teach you how to use the system to meet your exact needs. This will save a lot of time and will ensure that you’re taking full advantage of your purchase. 
6. Customer support. Will the provider look after you once you’ve invested in their CRM? It’s a good idea to look into this before making the leap. For example, when and how often are they available, and how will you be able to reach them? Are they reliable? 
7. The trial before purchasing. The most fail-safe way to prove that a system is right for you is to ask for a demonstration or trial it yourself. Making decisions based on reviews is not the best option, as business needs are diverse. What didn’t work for one person might be exactly what you’re after. Ask as many questions as you can, and shop around before simply buying the most popular software.
8. Mobile phone access. Let’s face it: if it’s on your phone, you’ll be more involved. It’s a good idea to invest in a system that can be displayed on mobile as business waits for no one. Unfortunately, some of the cheaper plans don’t have this feature, so if you prefer round-the-clock access to your data then you may have to spend a little more. 
9. Metric reports. Having a solid grasp of your metrics is vital to making the right business decisions. Make sure that the CRM you land on provides in-depth reporting on your data. 
10. Social CRM features. As social media platforms have become important for lead generation, consider if you require the capability to interact with your social platforms via CRM. 

When it comes to finding a CRM that will optimize your business results, it’s important to consider the points listed above. With so many models on the market, you’re almost guaranteed to find the perfect match.

Is There Really a Need for Data Cleansing?

The importance of clean data cannot be understated. Unfortunately, cleaning data is difficult to get on the agenda and to be allocated budget. Experian reports that on average companies data is only around 75% clean. This is costing significantly both in reputation and money. For example, in this day of strict privacy, having dispersed sources of data where the user may have consented at one point but not another, may lead to breaches of Privacy Laws.

The ROI on putting in place some data cleansing functions will be positive if the right steps are taken. But, it is only when senior executives call for “trusted” data that the problem can be seriously addressed.

What Types of Data Problems are There?

There are 5 types of data problems:

1. Incomplete Data.
2. Duplicate Data
3. Inaccurate data.
4. Inconsistent data
5. Outdated data

How Are Data Corruption Issues Prevented?

Solving each type of data problem needs a different approach. But let’s look at prevention. 

One of the best approaches is having a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) but this is an architectural solution that can only be addressed by a large IT Department change in strategy.  This ensures all – well as many as possible – use the same source of data for common data such as client data, address data and contact information. The data duplication, inaccurate data, inconsistent and outdated data cleansing still need to be done but it will be in one place and less of it. In the meantime, the following can be done. 

Another important tool in prevention is having standard approaches across all systems to ensure formats, rules and metadata are the same for the same type of data.

Reporting on Data Cleansing Problems

You will need to do data profiling providing adequate analysis reporting to identify data problems enabling measurement, visualisation and data profiling. Managers need to understand where the problems are located. Once problems are identified steps can be taken to fix the problems

How Are Data Cleansing Problems Fixed?

Whether it is incomplete, duplicate, inaccurate, inconsistent or outdata data problems that need to be tackled, there are many problems to assist in cleaning. 

For data duplication, this is perhaps the easiest because the tools allow selection of some fields to compare and identify duplicates.  Then making a decision on which of the duplicates is to be removed or merged with other data. This problem will require some manual intervention and oversight.

With outdated data, in some cases purging data after a certain date may be appropriate but usually not feasible.  Sometimes, these can be tackled by going to more up-to-date sources on the web and running updates. 

Inaccurate, incomplete and inconsistent data all need to be identified first. Then the decision can be made on the approach. One approach is to use externally sourced data, to update and improve the data. The other is to examine the data and apply a series of standards edits e.g. remove spaces and padding that is not needed, fix spelling mistakes, hot-deck (copy same data from other valid sources), fixing capitalization.  Once problems are identified manual intervention can allow you to do bulk updates.

Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Solutions

The solutions for cleansing data quality are improving. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Quality shows the top programs.

Data Cleansing Software List

There is now significant software and processes to help companies clean up their data including the following:

Content Problems

Amount of Content: There is so much content, that grabbing and keeping the customer’s attention is difficult. What is the key to standing out and keeping customers engaged? Content is now the heart of inbounding marketing but how to keep the heart beating when there is a need to produce constant content or sink in the mire of the internet.

Inconsistency: Because content is churned out by different departments the information in different content can clash.

Credibility: Some content can damage brand and product credibility by throwing words into a mixer and then laying them out without any focus.

Coldness: Some articles are so painfully full of facts without any emotion or human connectivity. They lead the viewer uninterested and, even worse, bored.

Improving Content

One of the key ways to improve content is to add images. But just plonking down some random images will not help. The key is to use storytelling structure to tie your product details, images, and information together in a way that attracts attention and then remains in the customer’s mind.

1. Strategy. A long term picture needs to be set up with a base story structure.
2. Brand Story. At the top, there needs to be the brand story from which all other stories flow.
3. Content Stories. Each content needs to have a story around a relatable person, put the interesting elements at the start, some type of conflict is required to keep the reader engaged, the story needs to be authentic. And, as a bonus, if possible use a little bit of appropriate humor.

Software for Content Storytelling

One of the options for improving your content storytelling is the application Shorthand.

Shorthand is a digital storytelling platform for teams in marketing, communications, and media. Build stunning, interactive stories for the web without relying on a team of developers.

See the video below.

One of the keys to running smooth operations in marketing is to implement practical data governance. You need to make sure that any data that you are publishing has some standards and rigger to ensure your team is delivering to the internal brand reputation. If you lose trust in the data then you start to have very critical issues within the company.

Step one is to implement the basics, where that if any data is published then you require the basic understanding of the source of data and the time period, and the author. If you put the owner of the data, and when the data was published, when it was updated and where it was sourced from.

Google analytics for example would give you different data to straight awstats logs of hits on website. And you will find depending on the source of data if it is sales from a crm, then salespeople might backdate their sales. So you want to know the period of the data and then when it was updated.

From here you can step into creating a data dictionary, everybody has their own definition of profit and opportunity for example, if you can state the contentious headings and the formula you will find this is gives the transperancy.

People loved how with excel you could click and see the formula. If you can provide that level of discovery in modern stacks like tableau or powerBi you will maintain the trust of the employees.

This is a complete ROI issue, where you need a committee to monitor the level of mistrust, and issues and decide how much the rule need to be enforced to decide the level of data governance.

The next important step in the maturity journey is to look at an approval system. Governance needs to be treated with a mix of training, policing and automation.

Where you can you want to publish your standards, then police what people are doing and then automate the approval. You might have a dashboard with sales and marketing data. You can establish data stewards that approve the dashboard and a ux of data and then a nice workflow for approval for a dashboard that will be company wide. If it is just for the sales department then it may just need one person to approve before publishing.

As with all governance it is about balance and growth and building something while managing your risks.

This data shows your average users usage of mobile vs computer. Clearly mobile is the number one place for search.

Previously google ranked the desktop first and then would make allowances based on the mobile performance.

Rankings will continue to pull in data from desktop or app content if required, but the primary focus is on mobile. Desktop will be used if it has additional ranking information but there’s no guarantee that it will be crawled. 

The focus on mobile simply aims to provide an optimal search experience for users. This has been a transitory process to date but as of September 2020 all sites will be indexed mobile-first.

Don’t fret just yet. Google’s already confirmed that most sites are ready for this transition and they’ve actually shifted 70% of sites over to mobile first indexing already (after checking they’re ready). 

So this means that your site should be mobile responsive and to design for mobile first. Speed is critical as not everyone has good internet or a fast phone.

• You can test your site  by typing the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing the output.
• Have your developer remove any unnecessary markup that isn’t relevant to the content of each page. 
• Verify your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot using the robots.txt testing tool 
• Ensure you have verified your mobile site in Google Search Console 

This will lead to you establishing a solid simple site that is light and simple to load.

A large proportion of the ads on browsers are third party cookies. Rather than just blocking cookies, Google is planning a phased approach with new tools for advertisers without causing the current irritation to browser users.

At this stage, it is unclear what the full impact of the loss of cookies will be. And any changes will be gradual.

At this point, the only thing that can be done is to be aware. Trackita will monitor changes and keep you up-to-date.

Ad Serving and Retargeting Platforms enable you to remind your customers of your products and services if your customers leave your website without buying. These platforms also allow your company to show visitors relevant ads when they visit other sites. Retargeting works with apps and searches as well as website banner ads. These will adjust as Google makes releases.