Yesterday, Roger wrote about the value of segmentation and how even the fundraising of smaller nonprofits could benefit from basic donor segmentation.

Today we’re at the other end of the spectrum — big organizations with heaps of data … which carries its own problems.

Here is a white paper from marketing and information services firm Experian, The State of Data Quality. This paper discusses the data woes of large commercial organizations and what they can do to improve customer data quality and put that data to better use. I’d observe that most mid- to large-scale nonprofits have the same issues.

Some of Experian’s findings:

• The average large organization has eight different databases. (I’ll bet you have at least four — major donors, direct mail donors, online donors, online activists. What others — visitors, catalog buyers? How well do they get along?!)
• An estimated 2% of contact data goes bad each month … a quarter of the database annually.
• Experian’s respondents believe 12% of revenue is wasted because of inaccurate and incomplete customer data.
• 94% of companies append ‘enrichment data’ to their basic contact info, chiefly (after sales data, of course) demographic and preference data.
• 84% of companies have loyalty or customer engagement programs, and 74% have data problems with these programs. (You’re not alone.)
• The perception of inaccurate data is rising — 22% is the average amount of data Experian’s respondents consider to be inaccurate in their organizations.
• Inaccuracy is blamed on human error and lack of internal communication between departments — in a context of multiplying sources of data plus sheer volume.
• On average, companies use 3.4 channels to collect customer or prospect data.
• 87% of companies engage in cross-channel marketing, with email being by far the most popular marketing communication channel (followed by social media, then mobile).

The State of Data Quality isn’t just about the problems; the paper offers plenty of advice regarding how to address your data issues.

If you ‘live’ in the data side of your fundraising operation, or if you simply realize that your fundraising effectiveness depends on quality data, smartly exploited, then Experian’s paper is well worth a read.

Tom

P.S. Experian has a series of data management white papers you might find helpful. Check them out here.