The job description of a marketer seems to change just about every day. The marketing channels have changed, as have the enabling technologies. And one very important element is the undeniable scrutiny placed on the Marketing Department as a whole. Marketers that don’t prove to be highly adaptable and resilient are quickly being replaced with those who are driven and have the ability to prove their value. In preparing to help our clients, one of the areas that I’m very interested in (and that usually doesn't get a lot of love) is data.

Guest blogger - April S. Brown

A database of prospects is useless unless you can make it speak. Sing. Serenade. So how will you illicit these dulcet tones from a spreadsheet? The fact is, without data we can’t do marketing and without good data, we can’t do good marketing. The ability to leverage relevant data is vital to developing targeted relationships with prospects and cultivating these relationships over time.

According to Sirius decisions in December 2008, "Best practice organizations can actually realize 70% more revenue based on data quality." Too often, data management within a company is either relegated to the IT dungeon or simply put on the 'too hard' pile and considered too tedious and cumbersome to deal with. Time goes by and data goes bad.