Salesforce and Account Engagement Features You Can Use to Improve Data Quality Today
In today's age of AI, data quality is no longer just a buzzword—it's essential for successful marketing campaigns. High-quality data empowers marketers to make informed decisions, create personalized experiences, and drive better results for companies and clients.
As Marketing professionals, we know the struggle of sifting through incomplete, outdated, or duplicate data. Thankfully, Salesforce and Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) offer powerful features to tackle these challenges head-on. Let's explore how you can elevate your data quality and see the ROI benefits roll in.
The Importance of Data Quality in Marketing
Before diving into the tools, let's emphasize why data quality matters. Poor data quality can lead to wasted resources, ineffective campaigns, reduced customer trust, and conflicts with your Salesforce Admin and leadership. When data is accurate, consistent, and comprehensive, marketers can:
Segment audiences more effectively.
Personalize communications for higher engagement.
Track campaign performance with precision.
Maximize the effectiveness of marketing budgets.
Moreover, as advanced features like Salesforce Einstein become available, having quality data will help accelerate your adoption. This multiplies the benefits mentioned above.
With that being said, here are Ten Salesforce and Account Engagement features you can use to improve your Data Quality today.
Install the Salesforce Lab’s Data Quality Analysis Dashboards. This set of dashboards and reports can be the first step in your data quality journey. The dashboards give you a benchmark that your team can measure to track your results and give your team a head start for creating SMART goals for data quality. I have used these dashboards with clients to discuss data quality and design projects to improve data quality.
Standardize Picklist and Radio Button values between Salesforce and Pardot. An everyday use case for this is State and Country picklist values, for which Salesforce has provided best practices. Work with your Salesforce Admin to determine what the values will be. This will make projects involving State and Country simpler since you only need to consider the values on the picklist instead of Abrivation, 2-letter code, etc. In addition, it makes auditing this data easy because anything not on the picklist is an invalid value.
Enable “Validate this field on import” for Account Engagement picklist and radio buttons. This one wont solve all of your data issues, though it will prevent inbound data quality issues. Suppose you have received a list from trade shows, affiliate sources, or have had to migrate prospects into Account Engagment via import. In that case, you’ve seen that the format and quality of the data can vary depending on the source and how it was handled before getting to you. By enabling the “Validate this field on import,” setting you can start building good habits for data quality that will pay dividends in the future.
Use Email Data Format and Predefined Picklist on forms to improve submission data quality. There is still debate around form field best practices, though being able to authenticate an email address and create personalized journeys is dependent on the data that your Prospects provide. If you communicate that in addition to the value of the content they are about to gain access to, then your prospects will be less hesitant to hit submit.
Start using Salesforce Matching and Duplicate Rules. If left unchecked, duplicates can wreak havoc on your data and, more importantly, your client experience. We’ve all had it happen to us. You are an existing client or returning customer. You submit a form, and less than 30 seconds later, a business development representative calls to qualify you as a lead. An advantage to using the Salesforce Marching and Duplicate rules is that it they are quick to configure and come with report types that help you identity and process duplicates in a timely manner.
These are just five data solutions you can use as a Marketer to improve your data quality, the customer journey, and ROI.
If your team has a goal to improve data quality then Contact Us to set up a consultation.
