The Care and Feeding of your Business Contacts Database

By Sylvia Montgomery

When was the last time you gave a hoot about the state of your contact database?  If your professional services firm is like most, it’s probably been a while. If you don't worry about how your contacts are segmented or how often records are validated, you're not alone. Contact databases are easy to neglect.

If you are the CEO of your firm, you probably don’t lose much sleep over how your contacts are entered into the database (assuming you have one). You don’t have time to worry about it…. You’ve got a company to run.

On the other hand, if you are responsible for marketing at your firm, you probably recognize the value of maintaining a clean contact database. But the thought of scrubbing a list of hundreds or thousands of names makes you cringe. Given the bandwidth required for such an undertaking, the work never gets done.

A firm’s technical subject matter experts (SMEs) may use contact lists on a daily basis, but their needs are basic. As a result, they are unlikely to worry about the quality of a contact database.

Keeping your contact database clean and properly segmented, however, is a critical first step to any successful marketing program. A well-maintained database can help you in a wide variety of ways. For instance, it allows you to:

1. Understand what portion of your business comes from new clients vs. referrals
2. Understand which of your target market sectors is most profitable
3. Track the various types of “touches” you have with your client
4. Maintain your ability to communicate with clients on a regular basis and grow the relationship.
5. Add value to your clients’ businesses by giving you ability to target different segments with relevant content.

Because of their long business development cycle, service firms need to be able to nurture prospective client relationships over a period of months, even years. The trick is to maintain a clean list that can be tapped with confidence at any time.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll delve into the selection, setup and use of contact databases. So check back often and learn how to care for and feed one of your fiirm’s most precious assets: your list.