What we sometimes take for granted as salespeople can dampen marketing effectiveness. A lack of record details can mean the difference between one prospect being sent a campaign and another being overlooked.
Marketing and sales should be a symbiotic relationship. An action in one area supports and compliments an action in another area. Mutual understanding and respect is vital.
Marketing professionals don’t look at data in the same way as salespeople. Salespeople can look at a poorly completed/updated record in GoldMine, with cryptic sales notes, which trigger recent memories, and then know how to act and/or respond appropriately. Marketing works with aggregate data – segmenting and reporting on it based on the details in the record.
For example, if a campaign is being targeted based on contact titles, and sales reps don’t gather or properly format the titles faithfully, a large percentage of targets may be overlooked by the campaign. Thereby killing opportunities before they even had a chance!
A marketing rule of thumb is that the quality of the list accounts for 40% of a campaigns success (the “offer” 40% and the “creative” 20%). It is also a marketing axiom that your in-house database of contacts is your most valuable list, and one of a business’s most valuable assets! Enhancing and getting the value of that list is what sales and marketing strategies strive to do.
Begin by defining the “must get” fields and reinforce accuracy. Salespeople must be accountable for missing information that is critical marketing. Your Solution Partner can show you many ways to improve list quality with GoldMine, including but not limited to:
· AutoUpdate Expressions
· Field Set-up Properties
· Automated Processes that Trigger based on dbase conditions
Your list is valuable, and so are the potential business opportunities that it represents. Focusing attention on improving the quality and usage of your GoldMine database can be a profitable resolution for 2003!
