How clean is your contact list?

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Be honest…did you reorganize and clean out cupboards and drawers during the lockdown? How about your contact list? Did this get organized and cleaned too?

Do you have a contact list or is your contact list that stack of business cards gathering desk on your desk or hidden away in a drawer?

A contact list database is a valuable digital asset, however, recently we had the realization that we had invested very little time and effort into maintaining and developing this asset. Whilst we had taken the time to upload all our contacts into the system no action was being taken to ensure the data was accurate and current. Bad data was in our database (and trust us this happens to everyone) in the form of duplicate contacts, irregular formatting, and junk / out-of-date records. Action was needed.

We decided to take action by sending all our contacts a generic holiday greeting’s message. From this one bulk email distribution we were able to identify the out of date contacts in our contact list and delete them. This also identified new sales opportunities – who had replaced this contact in the company? Where had the contact moved to?

Our next step was to identify duplicates and remove them. Of course, delete with caution, ensure that it is a true duplicate and that the most current data is being stored.

And then we worked on the uniformity of formatting in the database. Here, we found the use of formatting data fields especially for contact numbers and drop-down menus for regularly requested data such as: country very useful. For example: one person may write UAE in the data field for country, whereas, another colleague, may write United Arab Emirates.

A contact list will always be a work in progress but do schedule the time to ensure regular maintenance. If you are simply overwhelmed at the thought of cleaning your contact list, then give us a call at MY PA and we can assist you.