Most businesses are relying on high-quality data to make critical decisions for their organization. If the data is inaccurate and incomplete, they might create ineffective business strategies, lose potential leads, and eventually gain lower profits in the future. To ensure that data is accurate and complete, businesses rely on database validation to boost their data quality. But what is database validation? How does it work and why it’s important?
What Is Database Validation?
Database validation is the process and technique that helps data teams uphold the quality of their data. It is one of the most crucial parts of the data handling task, whether it is for the field of information collecting, presenting, or analyzing the data. In the B2B industry, an essential task is to validate data before it gets used for sales and marketing purposes in order to guarantee high-quality outcomes. According to a report by DemandGen, the dirty database can impact all areas of the enterprise including almost 80% of lead generation efforts and 66% of your marketing efforts. The report implies that B2B companies need to conduct comprehensive database validation in order to realize the best results from their lead generation and marketing efforts.
How Does Database Validation Work?
Validating a database can be a challenging and extremely time-consuming process, especially if you have large databases. To help you overcome these concerns, check out these three simple steps on how database validation works:
Step 1: Identify the Sample Data
Identify the data to sample. If you have a large volume of data, you will probably want to validate a sample of your data rather than the entire set. To do this effectively, you’ll need to decide what volume of data to sample, and what error rate is suitable to certify the success of your project.
Step 2: Validate the Database
Before moving your data, you need to make sure that all the required data is present in your existing database. Identify the number of records and unique IDs, and compare the source and target data fields.
Step 3: Confirm the Data Format
Know the overall health of the database and the changes that will be required to the source data to match the database you need for your project. Then, look at incomplete or incongruent counts, incorrect formats, duplicate data, and even null field values.
The Importance of Database Validation
For B2B companies, it’s essential to understand how database validation could help them improve their lead generation strategies and digital marketing tactics. Below are some of the great reasons why validating your database is essential in today’s world:
- Database validation ensures the information you hold in your system is correct and accurate. Doing this can benefit your company in various ways, particularly when it comes to the sales process.
- Sales teams depend on reliable data in order to build up and maintain exact sales lead lists and to pitch to prospective clients. If you have a bad database, your sales teams will forever call disconnected lines or write to dead email addresses, and it will be impossible to keep your sales pipeline full.
- Incorrect data wastes company time and could potentially mean you will miss out on a lot of opportunities. Database validation could save you a lot of time and effort.
- A recent study from Inside Sales revealed that 50% of buyers choose the vendor that contacts them first, so having invalid information and contact numbers could be holding you back when it comes to establishing yourself with a prospective client.
- When business contact information goes through the database validation stage, it can determine various database anomalies, ensuring the details on your file are accurate and correct.
- Database validation is important to businesses at any stage, not just when making contact with clients. When it comes to your repeat customers, corporate hierarchies, executive rosters, and financial details, working with good data you can trust is absolutely important in today’s digital world.
Taking a positive approach to database validation helps B2B companies in delivering useful data that can be understood throughout the organization. When applied properly, sales and marketing teams can work harmoniously and can create better lead generation strategies and digital marketing tactics that generate sales and profits.
Do you want to invest in database validation services? We’ve got you covered. Markable Solutions helps clients validate their existing databases by replacing incorrect or missing contact details, conducting phone verification, and ensuring uniform data format to make sure their databases are up-to-date. Interested? Call us now!
