Maximising customer engagement: A guide to data cleansing and enrichment

Step 2: Data enrichment with firmographics

Once your data is clean, it’s time to enrich it with additional insights. Firmographic data, which includes information such as company size, revenue, industry, and location, allows for more tailored marketing and sales efforts. This data helps identify key decision-makers, prioritise high-value leads, and refine your segmentation strategies.

There are multiple ways to enrich your data:

• Third-party data providers: Data enrichment solutions like Firmable, offer extensive firmographic data to complement your existing records. With Firmable, for example, you can gain access to accurate local decision-maker data, especially useful for companies targeting the Australian market. 

• Public sources: Leverage LinkedIn for company insights or company websites to manually enter data into your CRM, although keep in mind this can be manual and time consuming. 

• Customer surveys: Directly engage with your customers to update and expand on the information they provide. For instance, you could include firmographic questions in a post-sale survey to gather more data about their company size or future purchasing plans.

With enriched data, you can segment your database more effectively and increase your sales conversions. 

Step 3: Advanced segmentation

Segmentation is critical for targeted and personalised outreach. By segmenting your database, you can tailor your marketing campaigns to specific groups of customers, leading to higher engagement rates. In fact, according to Mailchimp, segmented email campaigns have a 14.31% higher open rate than non-segmented campaigns.

Common segmentation methods include:

• Demographic segmentation: Classify customers based on characteristics like job title, function, or time in role.

• Behavioural segmentation: Segment customers based on their engagement with your brand, such as the frequency of purchases or response to past campaigns.

• Firmographic segmentation: By categorising businesses by industry, company size, or geographic location, you can create hyper-personalised outreach.

For example, a company targeting firms in the construction industry can deliver specific messaging to sub-groups like “project managers who have just joined a construction company in the last few months and focused on delivering residential building projects”, to better address the unique challenges and opportunities in that sector for that person.

Firmographic segmentation improves sales and marketing ROI by ensuring you get to the right people, at the right time, and you‘re not wasting time on irrelevant leads. 

Step 4: Personalising communications for better engagement

Once your data is cleansed and segmented, personalisation is key to unlocking higher engagement. 

Here’s how you can leverage enriched data to create personalised campaigns:

• Sales outreach: Equip your sales team with deeper insights. When they know the industry, company size, and role of the decision-maker they’re reaching out to, they can craft more relevant and persuasive messages.
  
  
• Email marketing: Use firmographic data to personalise email subject lines and content. For instance, addressing a CEO of a large tech company versus a small retail business requires different language and offers.
  
  
• Targeted ads: With firmographic data, you can target specific industries or company sizes with relevant ads on platforms like LinkedIn or Google Ads.

Step 5: Ongoing data cleansing, maintenance, and CRM hygiene

Data maintenance is not a one-time task. An ongoing strategy for data cleansing and data enrichment will prevent inaccuracies from creeping back into your system. Businesses that perform regular data hygiene tasks, such as quarterly audits, reduce their customer churn rate by 15%, according to CustomerGauge.

Consider implementing enrichment tools like Firmable to keep your database in check. Schedule regular data cleaning reviews to ensure your database is as up to date as possible and providing your business with growth opportunities.

Conclusion