How to keep your CRM clean

Implementing a constituent relationship management (CRM) system isn’t easy and keeping it up-to-date can be challenging. “Garbage in, garbage out” is an expression often used to describe how the quality of input data affects output. For charities using CRM systems that concept is very true.

 

Despite the administrative burdens, CRM tools do come with significant benefits. To keep pace with changes to your donors, volunteers, and audiences, we go over why it’s important to keep your data clean.

 

 

What is CRM cleaning?

 

Does your CRM system work flawlessly and let you determine trends in your audiences? In simple terms, Salesforce says that the system should be able to:

• improve analytical data and reporting
• improve organisational information
• co-ordinate multiple teams
• enhance customer service
• automate tasks

To make your investment worthwhile, the system needs have reliable data. If the data being entered into your CRM system isn’t accurate, contains duplicate records, or has an incomplete dataset, the system won’t work well. Charities with poor quality data may make decisions based on the wrong facts.

 

CRM cleaning is the process of validating entries. It’s often time consuming and needs to be done on an ongoing basis, but can help charities reap the maximum benefits.

 

 

Best practice to keep your CRM system clean

 

Keeping your data clean means making sure that what’s going in, and inside the system are accurate and up-to-date. Our top tips to keep your system in shape includes:

 

 

1. Ensuring you have a process for data entry

 

Coming back to the maxim “garbage in, garbage out”, entering clean, verified data into the CRM system prevents errors.

 

Hubspot recommends standardising how charities input data. This means creating records with required entries. When inputting contact details, deciding which fields are necessary to complete the record keeps data clean.

 

Ensuring that at a basic level, each entry has an email address, rather than a combination of email addresses, telephone numbers and postal details. Ultimately what you collect for each record should be the same across all entries.

 

Pro tip: Include drop-down fields and format restrictions to help improve the quality of data going into the system. 

 

 

2. Keep the formatting consistent

 

For detail-oriented charities, formatting matters. Proper formatting means having a single way of noting down information. For titles, decide on how you’ll be recording “Mr” and “Mister” or “M”. Syntax is important because CRM systems see each recording as different even if the notation means the same thing.

 

CRM Dynamics offers tips to improve quality. They suggest introducing standards for each field you’re trying to capture and then noting down any exceptions in free text fields.

 

Pro tip: Take the long way around and do away with abbreviations. Inconsistent abbreviations may not show up in general searches.

 

 

3. Use data scrubbing services

 

Making sure that contact details are correct is a priority. This means ensuring that the details are in fact true – that supporters have given the correct information. Data scrubbers confirm the details are real without making contact.

 

Tackling the problem of fake details, Zoho’s CRM system includes modules that automatically checks contents. The modules ensure that emails, addresses and telephone numbers are in the correct format and validates them.

 

For charities on Salesforce, Cloudingo plugs into the CRM system and seeks out duplicate entries and inaccurate data. The plug-in lets charities search for specific criteria and flags records which may be ‘dirty’. Other plug-ins offer services to correct phone numbers and addresses.

 

Pro tip: Both Zoho and Cloudingo include free trials. Try before committing to long term contracts.

 

 

4. Reduce the number of unused fields

 

To reduce the noise in your CRM system, routinely review the fields you actually need and use. There may be fields in your entries of which only a few are populated. If you can do away with those fields, there will be fewer opportunities for data entry errors.

 

Pro tip: Only have as many fields as you need.

 

 

5. Set up a regular cleaning schedule

 

There are so many reasons to keep your CRM data clean in addition to learning about your audience. GDRP laws say that charities are only legally allowed to keep data for a certain amount of time. Data needs to be cleaned and purged at regular intervals. Also, Salesforce estimates that 70% of the CRM data collected becomes outdated annually.

 

Keep on top of the quality of your data by implementing a regular and ongoing cleaning schedule. This means going through the contact details and record histories and making sure they are correct.

 

Pro tip: During fundraising seasons, make note of any changes in contact details or email bounce backs. Edit your CRM data accordingly.