Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 As you put your 2022 marketing plans together, you’ll concentrate on acquisition, budget and campaigns. We would like to add another item to your list and move it to the No. 1 priority: Your data! Why data? Because data is the lifeblood of your marketing program. Without fresh, accurate and useful data, you can’t market effectively, spend your budget efficiently and reach out to both customers and prospects in meaningful and valuable ways. You can’t blame us at FreshAddress for focusing so closely on data. Since our founding, we have dedicated ourselves to making sure companies are working with the most up-to-date and accurate data possible. Data goes beyond email addresses. It includes customer and product data, test results, data from integrations among your customer, ecommerce and CRM databases and any other knowledge you can use to improve your connections and messaging. 5 Data-Driven Resolutions If you agree with us that clean, fresh and useful data is the foundation for an effective marketing program, but you’re not sure how to make it happen within your organization, we have five ideas to help you make it happen. It might not come together in a single year, but if you follow these ideas, you’ll look back a year from now and be amazed at the progress you’ve made. Data-Driven Resolution #1 – Resolve to clean your data. This is the first and most important step. Data decays over time. The longer it sits in your database, the less reliable it becomes, even if you practice regular list hygiene and remove invalid and spam-complaining addresses immediately. Free list-scanning tool: We believe so strongly in this idea that we’ve created Free List Check, a new tool to help marketers assess their list quality quickly and identify major issues that need follow-up. To get started, just upload a list in a .txt file. We scan it for any signs of invalid addresses, known spam traps and email addresses that could result from forced sign-ups. All pose a risk to your list health and ability to deliver to your customers’ inboxes. You’ll get a report back within minutes with a red/yellow/green indicator that shows your list’s exposure potential threats. The process is fast, easy and 100% secure. It’s absolutely no-cost, no-obligation. You don’t need a credit card to scan your list, either. Why not try it now and see how your list stacks up? Data-Driven Resolution #2 – Resolve to add to it. How much do you know about your customers, beyond their email addresses? Maybe a name, a city or a country? Maybe you have a complete customer profile in one database, but it’s not associated with their email addresses. Collecting more data and incorporating that data into your messaging will build stronger relationships and reduce inactivity and attrition. Surveys, preference centers and progressive profiling help you collect voluntary data from your users. Integrating data based on web behavior, customer-service contacts and other interactions, as well as a carefully structured append program, is another excellent source. Data-Driven Resolution #3 -Resolve to use your data to improve communications. Use both preference and behavior data to create more targeted and useful messaging. Customers want to see that you know who they are and what their relationship is with your brand. Segmenting and targeting messages is an easy way to add more relevant messages to a program that relies now on one-size-fits-all broadcast email. Adding triggered messages helps you capitalize on behavior data – what your customers are doing now – to bring them back to your website and stay engaged with your brands. Data-Driven Resolution #4 -Resolve to use data to reach out beyond email. Email should be the hub of your digital marketing program, but you can also use your email addresses to connect with your customers and prospects in other marketing channels. Social media channels like Twitter and Facebook offer paid programs in which you can use your email database to connect with users via paid messages. For example, you can connect with customers who signed up for the service with email addresses that you don’t have in your database or whose emails are lapsed, inactive or unsubscribed. Or, you have postal addresses but no email. Our Email Change of Address and append services help you fill in those gaps. Data-Driven Resolution #5 -Resolve to track email creative trends and your competition. Got a few minutes and an email address? That’s all you need to gain access to our growing Email Creative Archive, a real-time, searchable database of emails from a wide range of senders – promotional messages, newsletters and alerts from brand-name and regional B2B and B2C companies. Plus, it’s free! Search by brand or company name, by content in subject lines or message bodies, from today, yesterday, a week or month ago or within a custom date range. Create lists of emails to remember, and share messages with others. Want to know how a sender created a certain email? Go ahead, peek at the coding and then share it with your designers. Here’s a sample to get you started. See how other senders are incorporating data in messages such as welcome emails, abandoned-cart follow-ups, onboarding programs and other triggered messages. Share those messages with your designers, team members and higher-ups to show them the possibilities available to you once you have reliable data as your foundation How to get started We’ve given you an ambitious list of resolutions, for sure. The important thing to do, though, is just to get started. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on FreshPerspectives Blog and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Kathleen RogersView full profile ›More by this author:Resending Email Campaigns: 6 Tips for Success