How to Manage Your Organization’s Data for Optimal Results

The more organized you are in managing your company’s data, the more valuable that information will be for you. Bringing together various data points helps you better understand a customer’s lifecycle and how your marketing efforts impact that lifecycle.

Collecting, storing and maintaining data are all essential activities to getting the most out of your data.

So take some time to build a data strategy that guides you in understanding your customers more completely. Choose tools that interface with one another so that you can connect metrics like your website traffic to your PPC campaigns. That way, you follow leads from the moment they find your organization from an ad to the moment they become a new customer.

Why You Need a Data Management Strategy

The earlier you start managing your data, the better. It will be easier to connect various data points if you start your business with a firm foundation of considering your data management strategy.

As you add new applications, you’ll automatically plan for how they integrate with your other applications in your master strategy.

Here are a few important reasons why you need a data management strategy.

1. It provides reliable information to your business
2. Data that are regularly reviewed and updated are more valuable and accurate
3. You’ll ensure you meet all ethical standards for customer data use (such as GDPR)
4. The data is more actionable because you’ll have goals and standards attached to it

What Does a Data Strategy Include?

A data strategy includes considering how you’ll collect and maintain data throughout its usefulness. As you work to build your strategy, consider these key activities.

• Collection
• Storage
• Maintenance
• Integration
• Removal/Cleanup

Usage and reporting

In building your strategy, you’ll take things step-by-step. This means you’ll start by considering how you’ll collect and store your data. Since this is customer information, don’t forget to consider how to keep this data secure to avoid a breach and costly fines.

Then you need a way of maintaining that data, which means ensuring its accuracy. Allowing users to update their profiles to provide new email addresses or a mailing location will help ensure data integrity.

Now consider how you’ll integrate your data. You’ll likely have information coming from various sources and locations. By bringing it all together, you’ll understand how your customers interact with you in various locations.

Then you need to consider how you’ll keep data clean and a plan for removing unused data and data that is no longer useful.

Finally, consider how you’ll use the data that you have. Laws and regulations ensure that you don’t misuse the data, so you’ll need to comply with these rules. Part of this is considering how you set up data reporting to inform decision-making.

Types of Data That Can Be Valuable

Knowing where to start in collecting and organizing data can feel overwhelming. Ultimately, the best place to start is in considering where your data comes from. This might include:

• Leads
• Website information
• Market data
• Customer contact details
• Social media interactions
• Product information
• Sales contacts

A Partner in Better Analytics and Reporting

If concepts like a data strategy overwhelm you, locate a good partner like New Light Digital to provide regular reports and interpretation. Sometimes organizations track the wrong metrics that don’t help inform decision-making and next steps.

When you work with us, we guide you in tracking valuable metrics and how to use that data to inform next steps for your organization. Schedule a free consultation to learn more about our extensive marketing services.