The Cringe-Worthy Question

Ask any Marketing Ops, Sales Ops, or Biz Ops person: “How clean is your data in your database?” This question often triggers a cringe. We all want clean data, and we set up our systems to achieve it. However, bad data is like bacteria—it’s everywhere.

In this blog, I will share systems and Marketo smart lists to help identify, prevent, and fix data errors. Let’s start by understanding how bad data infiltrates your systems.

Understanding Data Issues

Sources of Bad Data

What’s causing the bad data? That’s one of the first steps you want to identify. As we talk through ways to clean data, one of the most important steps will always be to identify the source.

3 main sources are: data entry, ingegrations, and list imports.

• Data Entry: Typos or intentional input of incorrect information to access assets.
• Integrations: Different systems might not require the same fields or have the same data validation, leading to discrepancies.
• List Imports: Offline activities like events or other in person activities usually results in some type of list (paper, Excel file or Gsheets). List imports, if not thoroughly reviewed and standardized, can wreak havoc in any system.

Striving for Clean Data

Clean data is an ongoing process. You can’t just clean the data once and be done with it. People change jobs, emails, and phone numbers, making data maintenance a continuous effort. Ask any operations person after they clean the database how long it’s good for. They will probably tell you it’s already out of date! This makes monitoring systems essential to maintain data cleanliness.

Using Marketo Smart Lists

Marketo smart lists are invaluable tools for monitoring data integrity. Below are system smart lists that are included in all Marketo instances.

Marketo System Smart Lists

• All People: Everyone in your Marketo database.
• Unsubscribed People: Can only receive operational emails, usually controlled by the recipient.
• Marketing Suspended: Can only receive operational emails, controlled by the marketer.
• Blocklist: Will not receive any emails.
• Bounced Email Addresses: Undeliverable or rejected emails.
• Possible Duplicates: Potential duplicate entries in the Marketo database.

Read more on Marketo built-in system smart lists on Adobe Experience League.

Tips for Marketo System Smart Lists

These system smart lists are great. But if you don’t use them, they’re useless. So how do you get the most out of each one? Here are a few tips.

• Possible Duplicates: Create a special view to show the person source, acquisition program, original source type, created date, and SFDC type (lead/contact). Look for trends and commonalities. Identify if leads can be safely merged or if they should be deleted.
• Unsubscribed: Understand the overall unsubscribe numbers and process. Ensure resubscription is possible when people sign up again.
• Marketing Suspended: Spot check for any unusual patterns, such as opt-ins not completing double opt-in. Confirm the logic in your operational program.
• Blocklist: Periodically review to ensure no potential customers are blocked.
• Bounced Emails: Verify the accuracy of bounced email numbers. Check the logic in operational programs marking emails as invalid.

Weekly Monitoring with Custom Smart Lists

While system smart lists provide an overall gauge of database health, custom weekly smart lists are crucial for spotting and fixing issues early. What you set up for your instance is probably going to be different than what I set up based on how data comes in, how data is used, what integrations you have and more. These are a few that I have set up that were helpful for me.

Example Weekly Smart Lists

Here are some lists I’ve created to maintain database cleanliness:

• Missing First Name, Last Name, or Company Name: This helps you make sure key information is not missing. If it is, what can you do? For example, maybe you are missing company name on some of your forms. Or maybe an integration isn’t currently requiring a field that it should. Being able to monitor this weekly allows you to fix issues (like forms and field requirements) or put in automations to fix if you can’t prevent the issue (like an API that pulls in data – maybe you automate if the email address contains ‘@abc.com’ then company name is ABC Company). Identify sources and automate backend fixes where possible.
• Acquisition Program Check: Ensure acquisition programs are not missing and are aligned with lead sources. Are you consistenly missing an acquisition program for certain campaigns? This allows you to spot check and fix issues right away. You may find that it’s a timing issue for the stamped data. Or maybe a missing flow step. Manually update and retroactively fix discrepancies.
• Recent Database Entries: Review entries from the past 7 and 30 days for any irregularities. This check allows you to eyeball anything that you can’t put in a logic statement or maybe you just don’t know what to look for just yet.

Regularly reviewing these lists helps catch issues on the front end and automate fixes on the backend. This proactive approach ensures your Marketo data remains as clean and accurate as possible.

By implementing these practices, you can maintain data integrity and keep your database in top shape. Interested in how to use Salesforce dashboards for data integrity? Check out our blog, Salesforce Dsahboards for Data Cleanliness.