Now more than ever, data is the oxygen that powers businesses today and it truly underlines everything we need to run a healthy business, according to Validity vice president for Asia Pacific, Tunc Bolluk.

“Marketing technology is increasingly data driven and good data provides a solid foundation to build strong customer relationships,” Bolluk said in a recent Validity webinar titled Data: The Good 4-Letter Word.

Recent research from Validity has shown that poor data quality can cost businesses up to 20% of their annual revenue. Despite this, only half (51%) of organisations have a portion of their marketing budget dedicated to data quality and only 32% of businesses have a budget dedicated specifically to data quality.

Validity international vice president for customer engagement, Guy Hanson said the company views data quality through three lenses:

  1. Compliance: Is the data collected, stored and used in line with relevant legislation and standards?
  2. Correctness: Is the data accurate, error-free and unbiased?
  3. Complete: Is the data inclusive of all information required to fully understand the customer?

“Our research found that more than half of business respondents (53%) use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform to store customer and email data, closely followed by email platforms (50%) and one-third (33%) utilise a Customer Data Platform (CDP), with some using a combination of two or three platforms,” Hanson said.

“What was most striking was the rise of the CDP – a collection of software which creates a unified customer database that is accessible to other systems. Data comes from various sources, it is cleaned and combined to create a single customer profile and made available to other marketing systems.

“The growing number of organisations now using a CDP – in isolation or as part of a broader strategy – highlights the importance of bringing diverse data into one location. This delivers more confidence in correctness and completeness of data for organisations.”

Interestingly, there are significant variances in approach to data quality, depending on the type of platform used.

Validity’s research found that CRM users are 1.1 times more likely to monitor their data, are 1.5 times more likely to have data quality KPI’s and are more likely to think about compliance with legislation and industry standards.

However, CDP users are 1.5 times more likely to use double opt-in as their email permission model and are 1.7 times more likely to use real-time validation tools. Further, they are 1.5 times more likely to use subscriber preferences to drive customer segmentation.

Using the 3 Cs of data quality to increase customer engagement

Validity customer success manager, Andrew Fragias said the first C of data quality is compliance. He recommends businesses designate a compliance team to stay up to date with legislations and undertake regular security reviews to ensure customer data remains safe and consent is stored correctly.

“There are various regional data standards so it’s important for organisations to capture the geo location of customers, not just their name and phone number,” he said.

Fragias said the second C of data quality is correctness. “Businesses need to identify the impact of incorrect data, the required formats of data and permitted placeholder values. There must be validation of ownership and visibility of customer data,” he said.

Fragias said the third C of data quality is completeness. “Organisations need to align on the definition of customer data, reinforcing that the data must go beyond name and email, and include location. There should be processes to obtain missing data and mandate data captured,” he said.