The Ultimate Guide to Contact Data Cleansing & CRM Cleaning

Your sales and marketing software is only as good as the contact data that fuels it.

Inaccurate email addresses or phone numbers compromise your sales process. Missing critical demographic or behavioural data skews your customer analyses. And if there’s a misspelling of a client’s name, awkward mispronunciations await during your cold calls!

The solution?

Contact data cleansing and good ol’ CRM hygiene. So, here are the best ways to keep your records in tip-top condition. 👇

9 steps for a clean CRM

Check out these crucial steps for cleaning your contact data and ensuring it stays clean!

1. Define your data governance rules

Data governance is the foundation of CRM data cleanliness. It’s all about how your organisation manages the data it collects, stores, and uses.

This is an essential first step as it sets up the framework for deciding what data to keep and what to remove, among other things.

Defining your data governance rules involves:

1. Setting up roles and responsibilities for data governance (defining who owns data management).
2. Creating clear policies on data management (guidelines on how data should be collected, stored, updated, and when it should be deleted).

Compliance with regulations like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) should be a priority here; your data must be processed lawfully.

Now that you have clear guidelines for your CRM data, turn your attention to your existing data. You'll need to figure out what needs to change.

Look for:

• Data points or practices that are non-compliant.
• Formatting inconsistencies.
• Missing fields.
• Duplicate accounts or people.
• Outdated entries.

Tip: You might like to read about Data as a Service.

2. Get rid of poor-quality data 

Here’s where most of the actual cleaning takes place.

This is mostly about culling data, but it also includes some updates. Here’s what you should focus on:

• Duplicate records. Manual data entry errors, data imports, or integrations with other tools can cause these. Removing duplicates is an easy first step.
• Outdated contacts. This includes leads that have changed companies, companies that are no longer relevant, inactive users, or accounts you’re no longer going after.
• Incomplete records. These entries are missing key information like email addresses, phone numbers, or demographic details such as company size or annual revenue.
• Incorrect data. Typos, misspelt names, or data entries inconsistent or non-compliant with your formatting requirements.
• Spam or fake leads. Junk data from bots or low-quality form submissions should also be removed.

This doesn’t have to be a cumbersome manual process. Several helpful tools support faster CRM and contact cleaning.

Many CRMs have a deduplicate function built in. You can use a solution like Cognism to clean your CRM from there.

By integrating your CRM with Cognism, you can automatically update outdated contacts, enrich incomplete data records, and replace incorrect data points that are slowing your reps down. More on that later.

3. Fix inconsistent data structure

Inconsistent data structure occurs when data is formatted differently, for example, different capitalisations in company addresses or varying phone number structures.

These inconsistencies can hurt your ability to easily find, group, and analyse your data.

To address them, data administrators should use the following tools:

• Normalisation tools: These software platforms automatically reformat data into a consistent structure according to your preferences, thus eliminating inconsistencies.
• Find and replace operations: In your CRM or spreadsheet tool, conduct bulk find-and-replace operations to standardise common discrepancies (e.g., replacing “Ave.” with “Avenue”).

Most data cleansing tools will offer a feature to ensure a consistent data structure.

Some will even use machine learning to identify inconsistencies, automate fixes, recommend options for a new standardised structure, and make appropriate alterations.

4. Fill in missing data points

When key B2B data points are missing from contact records, it’s hard for salespeople and marketers to do their jobs effectively.

For example, they can’t send email campaigns without accurate email addresses. Without data about their audience’s companies and locations, they can’t segment them geographically and create targeted outreach.

Perhaps this is why respondents to the Validity survey cited “missing or incomplete data” as the number one data quality issue “seriously impairing” their ability to take full advantage of their CRM:

To fill in your missing data points, use a data enrichment tool that automatically populates your missing contact fields with accurate data.

For example, with Cognism’s On-Demand CSV Enhance, you can upload your CSV file containing your list of contacts, and Cognism will enrich it with compliant, accurate data.

Just like that, your contact records are complete! They’ll have the correct phone numbers, email addresses, demographics, and all the other information you need to reach and sell to them.

5. Standardise data and create data entry guidelines

Now that your CRM looks fairly clean, it’s time to think about how you’ll keep it that way. Creating standardised data formats and data entry guidelines is a good step.

For standardising formatting, some best practices include:

• Defining naming conventions (e.g. using VP instead of Vice President).
• Standardised phone number formats (e.g., +1 (123) 456-7890 vs. 123-456-7890).
• Ensuring all date fields follow the same structure.
• Using dropdowns and predefined fields for data points like industries, countries, or job titles.
• Setting rules for addresses and locations (e.g., United States vs. USA).

Your guidelines can be a simple one-page document that outlines your data entry process, including the key fields and required formatting.

Make sure the document is distributed and accessible to anyone responsible for entering data, from SDRs to IT implementation teams.

Tools like Cognism, which can automate data entry and validation during CRM enrichment, are a great way to ensure these guidelines are followed accurately.

6. Invest in software tools to keep data fresh and accurate

After taking these steps, your data should be in much better shape.

Unfortunately, data tends to go stale.

This is especially true in hectic times like these, where people seem to be switching jobs and locations like crazy, making their job titles, email addresses, and other info outdated.

In Validity’s State of CRM Data Management Report, 70% of respondents said that a rise in employees switching jobs and/or locations during the COVID and post-COVID eras has led to an all-time low in data quality.

Invest in a B2B data enrichment platform to keep your data fresh and avoid having to do a big spring clean in the future.

These tools automatically enrich all the incomplete customer records that enter your system. For example, if a lead enters your CRM through a web form and only asks for their name and email address, the tool will fill in the other fields you care about, like phone number or job title.

Cognism also lets you set up rules dictating which new records are enriched. For example, in the below image, only leads from the UK without a mobile number are enriched:

You can also set up scheduled CRM enrichment daily, weekly, or monthly. That way, when a contact in your CRM changes companies or gets a new email address, the contact record will be updated automatically.

7. Enhance your CRM data

Cleaning up your CRM isn’t just about eliminating old or outdated data points.

It’s also about ensuring that the data in your CRM provides the greatest value to your revenue team.

Now that you’ve standardised your data formatting, you must look at data validation and enrichment.

Data validation is the process of ensuring new and existing records remain accurate and usable. Enrichment is about adding missing data points, such as additional contact numbers or the company’s industry.

The best solution here is to integrate Cognism’s CRM enrichment feature. 

Here’s how it works:

First, you set up the native integration between your CRM and Cognism.

Then, Cognism automatically scans your CRM, fills in any data gaps, validates that the data is correct, and updates any incorrect or outdated records. 

The end result?

High-quality data that helps you identify target accounts faster, improve lead scoring and routing, and accelerate pipeline velocity.

You can also use our Instant CRM Enrichment function to automatically enrich new accounts as they enter your database (e.g. via a lead form), ensuring sales has the information they need to follow-up quickly.

8. Categorise and segment data

Now that you’ve cleaned and enriched your CRM, you can better categorise and segment data to fuel marketing and sales campaigns.

You’ll want to focus on ensuring that:

• All data points are correctly categorised as leads, prospects, customers, lost deals, or inactive users.
• Firmographic and demographic fields like company size, industry, job title, and location are filled in, helping you refine targeting.
• Contacts can be grouped based on behavioural data such as website visits, email interactions, content downloads, or past purchases.

9. Establish a regular CRM cleaning cadence

One last step here.

Even with the best data cleansing process, CRM data still becomes stale over time. People leave companies, contact details change, and some organisations just go out of business.

That’s why you should have a CRM cleaning cadence in place.

A smart way to automate this is to use Cognism’s Scheduled CRM Enrichment feature to scan and analyse existing data points in your CRM regularly. Cognism automatically updates stale data points and corrects data entry errors, keeping key fields accurate and actionable.

What is contact data cleansing?

Contact data cleansing is updating, removing, and correcting the contact information in a business’s database, such as a CRM database.

The aim is to create a more complete and accurate contact database that powers data-driven decision-making and helps sales reps and marketers run more effective campaigns.

Here are some of the everyday tasks involved in the contact cleansing process:

• Removing duplicate records.
• Deleting bounced email addresses from your marketing platform.
• Standardising data structures in your CRM (for example, fixing first names starting with lowercase).
• Enriching your sales software with third-party data to fill in missing data points.

Manual data cleansing is possible, but it’s time-consuming and prone to human error.

Therefore, many businesses use third-party tools to automate these tasks through features like deduplication, record auto-completion, email verification, inconsistent data flagging, and data enrichment.

For example, companies use Cognism to automatically populate their CRM with up-to-date contact information about professionals and businesses.

With an automated data cleaning process, your sales team will have the data they need to spot opportunities, reach out to leads, and analyse processes — without spending time scrubbing that data.

Why is CRM cleansing vital for B2B companies?

Poor-quality CRM data hinders the performance of your marketing and sales tools, which in turn hurts your team’s ability to nurture, close, and retain customers.

It’s like using a skateboard with rusted wheels. It rolls slowly, causes wipeouts, and makes it difficult to achieve the kickflips you envisioned when you bought it.

Now, how exactly does dirty data negatively impact sales and marketing teams?

Validity ran a survey asking CRM database administrators what their companies were losing due to poor CRM data quality.

Here are the results:

How does poor data quality lead to each of these issues?

• Losing existing customers: Incomplete customer profiles cause your customer success team to misunderstand customer needs, and incorrect contact information results in missed opportunities to connect with buyers and grow the relationship.
• Missed sales opportunities: Without accurate data, marketers and salespeople might segment leads differently, causing some leads to receive emails containing irrelevant marketing content and offerings.
• Employees leaving for better data: High performers expect the best tools. No sales rep wants to make a cold call and then discover the lead left the company years ago. Likewise, no marketer is happy when their email campaign reaches just 60% of their contact list.

By having a strong data cleansing process, you prevent the above from happening. You arm your team with accurate information and well-functioning tools that help them drive successful sales and marketing outcomes.

Three tools for cleansing your contact data

Contact data cleansing tools offer features like deduplication, error detection and correction, data matching, and data enrichment.

Below are three of the best tools for B2B companies.

Cognism

Cognism is a B2B data enrichment tool that makes it easy to keep your contact data fresh and accurate.

For example, with Instant Enrich, whenever new leads enter your database, the tool fleshes out each profile with mobile numbers, job titles, company financials, and other data points you need to personalise your outreach.

And if that contact gets promoted, Scheduled Enrich can automatically update the outdated record in your CRM.

Cognism offers three ways to enrich your B2B contact data:

1. Instant Enrich: Set enrichment criteria and purify new lead and contact records before they enter your CRM and other marketing tools.
2. Scheduled Enrichment: Create an automatic enrichment schedule to keep specified records up-to-date.
3. CSV Upload: Upload a list with outdated or incomplete contact details, and Cognism will update it.

Best of all, Cognism’s data is GDPR and CCPA-compliant, so you won’t have to worry about accidentally filling your CRM with illegally sourced information.

See Cognism Enrich in action - take an interactive tour 👇

HubSpot Operations Hub

HubSpot Operations Hub is HubSpot’s CRM for RevOps and SalesOps professionals who deal with lots of data.

It offers many tools for keeping your contact data clean and usable, including:

• Data quality automation to automatically fix format names, date properties, and more.
• Data command centre to gain a bird’s eye view of your contact data’s health, spot possible data issues, and keep out poor-quality data.
• Data sync to ensure data transfers across your tech stack and avoid data silos.

It’s a great tool if you want to track the effectiveness of your data cleansing initiatives and protocols since it provides robust data quality reporting, as shown below:

HubSpot also integrates with Cognism, allowing you to take advantage of Cognism’s data enhancement while benefiting from HubSpot’s Command Center and CRM features.

DataMatch Enterprise

DataMatch is a software solution that makes it easy to catch and fix data errors and maintain good CRM data hygiene. It offers code-free data profiling, discovery, cleansing, matching, and deduplication.

A highlight of this tool is its ability to analyse the current status of your data. It then offers suggestions about what work needs to be done. Whether that’s deduplication or increased standardisation, you can do it directly on the platform.

You can also set up real-time API workflows that validate incoming data as it enters your CRM.

How often should CRM data be cleaned?

The frequency with which you perform a full CRM clean depends on the size of your company, the data you store and process, and how well your team abides by data entry and governance practices.

A good idea is to perform different levels of cleaning at different intervals, such as:

• Ongoing and automated: Deduplication, enrichment, and validation.
• Quarterly: Database audits, re-segmentation, removal of inactive contacts.
• Annually: Review and update CRM workflows and automation rules, full database purge, run compliance checks.
  

Can CRM data cleaning be automated? 

Yes, CRM data cleaning can be automated.

Solutions like Cognism’s Scheduled Enrichment feature can help you automatically identify duplicate records, update out-of-date contact details, and fill in blank data fields.

What are the best practices for maintaining CRM data hygiene?

The best practices for maintaining CRM data hygiene include:

• Using an automated data cleansing and enrichment tool.
• Standardising data entry guidelines.
• Regularly cleaning and auditing CRM data.
• Providing training to CRM users on data hygiene best practices.
• Using integrations to improve data accuracy and reduce manual processes.
• Removing unengaged and inactive contacts.

Contact data cleansing: the last word

Data dentists don’t exist; no one can shame you into cleaning your data!

But that doesn’t mean you can skip it.

Clean B2B contact data means smooth CRM automation, efficient business operations, and accurate sales analysis.

To improve your data hygiene, remove duplicates and fix errors such as inconsistent data structures. Then, fill in the empty fields with accurate data from a B2B enrichment tool.

Finally, to keep your data from becoming outdated, invest in software (like Cognism!) to automate the cleanup process, from deduplication to automated lead record completion.

Then, you’ll have data you can be proud of — accurate, complete, and up-to-date.