CRM Declutter 101 – Tidying Up Your Contact Data For The New Season

Who says you have to wait till Spring to keep your CRM database clean? Summer is slowly coming to an end which marks the beginning of a busier season and though putting aside your responsibilities to go play in the sun, may sound tempting, taking the time during the slower business season to clean up your account will help you in the long run.

Here are a few steps you can take to clean up the contacts in your Nimble account and alleviate time on future data cleaning:

Start With These Prevention Methods

Import Contacts That Only Pertain To Your Business

When uploading information to your account, you should first determine the importance of the contacts. It’s so easy to hit the “Import” option on your social accounts but you should first determine how the contacts and companies are relevant to your business.

In Nimble, when importing contacts from your Twitter account, there’s an option to limit which group of contacts are imported to your account.  Instead of selecting “ALL”(as in import all 5K Twitter contacts to Nimble), click the drop-down list to select to add just your “friends”, “followers”, “following” or any Twitter list you’ve created.

 

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One best practice is to clean up your contact list externally before adding new leads to your database.This enables you to filter out contacts that do not pertain to your business.

If you are working with a long list of contacts in a spreadsheet, filter out any duplicates, incomplete, or irrelevant contact entries before uploading to your account.

Create Tags Upon Import

When adding your contacts into Nimble, it’s important to remember that each importer has the option to add a tag! Tags in Nimble are a quick and painless way to assure your contacts are grouped and organized right from the get go.

If you apply a tag to any group of contacts you import, you’ll be able to easily locate them when you need them.

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Tags may also be created inside your CSV file. Simply create tag columns and label them as Tag 1, Tag 2, etc. in your CSV file.

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Learn more about tags here: Tag Overview

Manage Contact Cleanup In Nimble

Cleanup Tags and Segments

In your Contacts tab, there are two custom ways to organize your contacts. You may have already identified them.  They are Tags and Segments.  Tags can be applied upon import, in a CSV file and in-app. While Segments can only be applied in-app but are a more detailed way to group your contacts into specific lists.

For example, with Segmentation, you can pull a list of small business owners in your database in California. You can then save this list as a Segment to easily access at a later time.

The trouble is, after re-engaging with your small business owners in California, you may find out that they no longer live in California or they have changed companies.

Take the time to reach out to your contacts using our Group Messaging feature to discover what your contacts are up to. You can then use this information to update their Tags, Segments and even their individual contact record.

To remove a tag, simply visit the Tag section, hover over the unwanted tag and click the trash icon. You may alternatively edit the Tag by clicking on the pencil icon.

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To remove segments, click the trashcan icon while in a segmented group. You may also use the pencil icon to edit the segmented group.

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Update Contact Profiles

As mentioned above, using the Group Messaging feature is a great way to check in on your leads and contacts. By doing this, you can determine if they are still relevant to your business and if their email address is still active. It also gives you a nice excuse to re-engage, especially if you haven’t interacted with your contacts in a while.

Visit the “Contact Info” sub-tab in the contact record to see which information is still legitimate. If the information is outdated, click on “Edit” and make the necessary changes.

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Remove Duplicates

Duplicates happen when the same contacts or companies have been added to the system multiple times. Though Nimble does take steps to merge existing contacts with new contacts, it’s normal that some may slip through the cracks.

In Nimble, utilize the “Find/Merge Duplicate” feature while on a contact record.  The system will then search for contacts with similar information (name, email address, social identities, etc) then ask if you would like to merge the contacts.

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It could take some time to go through each record, however, it’ll be worth it when you have a complete database of well organized contacts.

You may also consider bulk cleanup. This requires that you export all of your contacts out of Nimble and fix up the information in the CSV file. Learn more about exporting contacts here: How do I export data out of Nimble?

Within the file, you can merge any duplicates, update contact information, eliminate unnecessary tags, etc. When you are ready, you’ll be able to import back to Nimble using the Generic importer in your Settings >> Networks & Imports.

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Other Areas You May Consider Updating

Here are a few other areas you may consider updating in your Nimble account:

  • “Stay In Touch” and “Marked Important” contacts – Determine if your contacts still belong in these filters
  • Lead Details – Is it time to change the lead’s type, status and source?

Putting aside the time to examine your database and perform contact cleanup during the leisure season will save you from spending your after hours sorting through a mess of contacts once the workload increases.
Follow the tips in this article to achieve efficient data quality and increase opportunities for leisure. And don’t forget to check contact cleanup off your summer to-do list. 🙂