/ Management / Contact Information: Do You Keep the Important Stuff?Does your contact profile help you market? If it doesn’t you are keeping the wrong information in it. Lets go over a couple of basics.
Who or what is a contact? For marketing, contacts are generally divided into prospects and clients. A prospect has not yet bought from you and a client has. If you want to communicate with a contact you have to have at least a name, and a physical address and/or an email address, depending on the type of communication you are planning.
Marketing requires something more. Selling to a prospect requires tracking what that person has expressed interest about. What a client bought last time tells you what they might be interested in next time. If you track reasons for buying you learn a lot about which prospects are ever likely to become clients. You also learn what other products on your list might be sold to which existing clients.
Every six months, do something to validate email addresses. Make sure everyone has a way to update their contact information with you. Finally, screen prospects so you don’t junk up your contact list with people who are never going to buy from you. Prospects are only prospects if they fall within your market definition.
If you keep other information in your contact records, question it. If information you keep doesn’t help you market, sell, or deliver an outstanding customer experience, it is just a burden. Delete it.
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