Monthly Archives: October 2014

Halloween: A time of tricks, treats and non-stop horror flicks playing on television. I don’t consider myself a scary movie aficionado by any means, but I've watched enough of these films to learn certain facts: don’t ever investigate scary noises alone, kids who see ghosts should be taken seriously and there is never cell phone service during paranormal events.

As a marketer, this got me thinking: horror movies are ripe with certain clichés storylines, just like certain scary themes that seem to recur for marketers. I’m talking about the unexpected, fear-inducing issues that can pop up and derail email marketing efforts, monsters living in your email list that quickly drive your engagement rates and other metrics into the ground.

Having nightmares yet? Check out my list of the most common scary stories we see related to email marketing.

I've just ended a 3 week tour of industry events and user conferences specific to the digital marketing and email industries. Getting out of the office is always great as I have an opportunity to hear what customers and thought leaders are buzzing about. I heard a lot of conversation about different marketing technologies and strategies that organizations are using to reach their customers.

Savvy marketers know that the days of batch-and-blast email campaigns are over, and they’re investing heavily in marketing technologies to better target and nurture their customers.

The first two stages of data quality boot camp helped teach you how to collect better contact data on your website and in call centers, but your work isn't over yet! There are many more places where you can collect customer information, including the good old fashioned in-person experience.

Brick-and-mortar woes

Thirty-nine percent of organizations collect customer contact data at physical locations. Data is typically collected by an employee at the point of sale, but can also be entered into a kiosk by customers. In either case, human error is the number one culprit of bad contact data being collected.

In our first blog post in this three-part series, we discussed how you can take the first steps in your data quality boot camp program: tackling bad data collected through your website. But how do you manage issues within other channels? Here we’ll focus on managing data quality in your call centers.

Calling out call centers

No matter what type of organization or industry you’re in, at some point, a customer may need to reach out to a call center. But because of disparate systems, a customer can have an entirely different experience with your company on a website vs. when they call you.