Maintaining correct and current data is crucial if you utilize a customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage your leads, contacts, and accounts. However, how can you manage outdated, missing, or duplicate records in your Real Estate CRM? This post will outline the importance of CRM data hygiene and CRM Database cleanup for your real estate business as well as practical and efficient ways to carry them out.

What are the benefits of accurate database in CRM?

The 21st century world is moving on data and businesses are doing more sales and earning revenues by systematically using and nurturing the existing customer database and with the help of data science curating the insights on customer behaviour and knowing their persona. Below are some of the advantages of having a  valid and accurate database.

  • Improved decision Making - accurate data enables sales, marketing and leadership teams to make informed decisions based on real time customer behaviour and trends rather than assumptions.
  • Higher conversion rates - When your lead and contact database is correct, your digital campaigns can be more personalised and targeted for digital marketing platforms like Facebook and Linkedin for Match audience and Look-a-like audience campaigns.
  • Reduce wasted efforts - Sales teams don't waste time calling on wrong numbers and chasing invalid leads or emailing inactive contacts.
  • Cost Saving-  Storing and maintaining inaccurate and duplicate records can drive up CRM storage and Campaign cost.
  • Faster CRM Performance-  A lean, clean database runs faster and smoother especially in large scale CRM’s which are often used for real estate businesses.

1. Why data quality matters

The accuracy, completeness, consistency, and relevance of your data are all considered aspects of CRM data quality. You can rely on your CRM to give you accurate insights, reports, and projections if it has high-quality data. Additionally, it saves you time and money by preventing you from pursuing down erroneous leads, sending pointless communications, or passing up possibilities. Conversely, poor data quality can result in decreased client satisfaction, lost income, and harm to one's reputation.

2. Common data quality issues

Numerous things, including human mistake, system error, data decay, and data silos, can impact the quality of the data in your CRM. Duplicate records, incomplete records, and outdated records are common problems with data quality that you could run into. Incomplete information might hinder your capacity to interact with clients, while duplicate records can lead to misunderstandings and false reporting. Bounced emails, unanswered calls, and broken connections might result from outdated records. The quality of your CRM data may be negatively impacted by each of these problems.

3. How to assess your data quality

Prior to enhancing the quality of your CRM data, you must evaluate its present condition and pinpoint the areas that want improvement. Metrics, feedback, and data quality audits can all be used to achieve this. Data quality audits are methodical examinations of your data to look for mistakes, discrepancies, or gaps. Metrics for measuring the completeness, correctness, timeliness, and uniqueness of your data are known as data quality metrics. The opinions of your data users, such as your marketing, sales, or customer support departments, regarding the quality and usability of your data are known as data quality feedback. You can conduct data quality audits, monitor your progress over time, and get input on data quality using integrated or external technologies.This will help you set goals and benchmarks for improvement, as well as identify the pain points and priorities of your data users

4. How to clean your data

Cleaning your data entails updating, deleting, or fixing any old, erroneous, or incomplete entries in your CRM. Data validation, data enrichment, and data deduplication can all be used to achieve this. Finding and eliminating duplicate records in your CRM is known as data deduplication. This procedure can be automated using built-in or third-party tools, or it can be done manually by reviewing and resolving duplicate records according to your rules and criteria. The process of upgrading or adding missing or out-of-date information, like your address, phone number, or email, to your records is known as data enrichment. You can automatically or manually enrich your data cleaning  by integrating your CRM with external data sources like social media, web scraping, or data providers using built-in or third-party solutions. Data validation is the process of verifying and confirming the accuracy and validity of your data, such as email, phone, or address. You can use built-in or third-party tools to check your real estate lead database against authoritative sources, such as email verification, phone verification, or address verification services, and validate your data periodically or in real time.

5. How to maintain your data quality

CRM Data cleanup is not a one time fix, it's an ongoing process that needs constant attention and upkeep.  To maintain clean and reusable database for remarketing and contact management you should-

  • Automate data quality workflows - Use CRM tools like PropFlo or Zoho to run a schedule checks for duplicates or missing data.
  • Define a CRM data hygiene policy -  Set the rules on how leads should be entered and fix the online lead form submission format with mandatory fields such as First name, Last Name, Email format, Phone numbers and Company Name)
  • Assign a CRM database owner- Assign roles for team members to review and manage database monthly and quarterly basis with quality checkpoints.
  • Set a monthly cleanup cycle - Perform data audits regularly to ensure records are accurate, up to date and useful for marketing, presales and sales.

6. Best tools to Automate CRM Data Cleaning

You dont need clean your crm database manually, here are the some popular tools that will help you identify and fix duplicate, missing or outdated data with invalid contacts

  • PropFlo - An AI powered Real Estate CRM with Automated data de-duplication and enrichment with flexibility to customize your workflows according to the business requirements.

  • Clearbit - Automatically adds the missing information within contact  such as company name, job title and phone number.

  • Dedupely/Incycle - Merge duplicate contacts, leads or accounts across different sales crm.

  • Neverbounce - Verifies email addresses and reduces the bounce rates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What's the frequency of cleaning my CRM data?

Answer- You must audit your CRM a minimum of once per quarter but monthly for real estate or high-volume companies.

Q2: What if I don't clean my CRM data?

Answer- Bad CRM data causes lost leads, inaccurate reporting, reduced ROI on marketing, and inefficient sales.

Q3: What's the best CRM for handling clean real estate data?

Answer- CRM’s such as PropFlo. have integrated functionality to automatically clean and maintain your real estate lead database without the need for third-party software.