Mastering Data Hygiene in HubSpot: An In-Depth Guide with Jessica Palmeri

All right, hub heroes, when you show up to work daily, where are your thoughts on data hygiene? Are they top of mind at the bottomless, darkest pits of your brain or is the topic just simply non existent? What I'm asking is do you have a culture of data cleanliness? If so, great. I know that you'll still learn some tips and tricks to make your database even more squeaky clean on today's show. If you are the person in the room thinking, wait, I need to keep my database clean, then boy, are you in for a treat today. I'm excited to discuss today's topic. Today on the Hub Hero Sidekick strategy show data hygiene and what you need to know with Jess Palmary. Now Jess. Who is Jess? That might be what you're asking. Jess is impacts lead HubSpot trainer with a long track recording of leveraging HubSpot as a marketer as well as as training HubSpot clients on how to maximize their investment in the tool. She has 10 plus years of hands on HubSpot experience and Jess works with clients to up their inbound marketing game, consider out of the box automation strategies and ultimately achieve their organizational goals. She's active in the certified HubSpot trainer community and periodically connects with product managers at HubSpot. I love those calls, by the way.

Oh, they're the best.

They are to provide feedback on their product roadmap. Ladies and gentlemen, let's get into data hygiene. Let's get into the good stuff. But first, Jess, how the heck are you today?

I'm doing great, George. I'm so excited to be on this podcast with you, to be talking about everyone's favorite topic, hygiene. I mean it's, it's practically as exciting as the trip to the dentist, but we're going to spice it up today.

There we go.

Exactly. When you asked, like, what was the topic that I wanted to discuss today and you know how I wanted to get into it. I, I, this is sort of like the unsung hero of whether or not your HubSpot database is really going to work for you. So many of the challenges that I face with my clients really start at the data hygiene level. It's, it's the kind of, it's the force, it's, if it's not in balance, if it's not in focus in the background, it's really not going to work for you. So it might not be the sexiest topic, but we're going to make it exciting today.

We're going to try to make dental exams and data hygiene exciting. Today. Now, here's the fun thing, Jess. One of the things I love to do is level set, because I understand that, that it could always be somebody's day one. They could be coming in to the community@community.hubheroes.com this could be the first, you know, video or podcast they're watching. And so I'm going to just start at the basic fundamentals and ask you, can you explain when we use the words data hygiene, what that means in marketing and why it is essential, why it is the force, why it needs to be in balance, and why marketers need to prioritize it.

So when I think data hygiene, I think, is your database actually healthy? Can you say with confidence that you know why every single contact is in that tool, why every single deal is associated with those contacts and companies? What is their purpose? What is their value to you? And most importantly of all of the custom properties that you generate and create to capture all of that valuable information that's unique to your business, to your organization, can you say that each one of those properties has value and purpose to your organization? Are you fundamentally building a foundation that you can grow upon in the future, or are you, you know, creating gaps and cracks in that foundation so that one day everything is going to come crumbling down, probably when you least expect it?

Yeah. And you don't want it to come crumbling down. And it's funny because you mentioned, like, gaps and cracks and I would even say maybe duplicate sidewalks that don't need to be there. All sorts of, like, craziness. And let's just go ahead, Jess, and dive into that. What are some of the common challenges or issues that maybe arise? You said crumbling down when you least expect it. Right. But what are some of the common challenges or issues arising from poor data hygiene practices in our marketing and dare I say, even our sales? Just general contact, you know, deal, company. The database.

The database. The database. So let's talk about a few fundamental scenarios. Scenario one, you're listening to this podcast because you are brand new to HubSpot. You just have that shiny new portal and you think it's got to be clean and dandy. Right? I just purchased this darn thing. Everything has to be in place. No, it's clean, sterile, and completely unusable right now because you haven't customized it to fit your needs. So you have a ton of really fundamental and really important choices to make of how you're going to build that architecture to start. So how are you going to capture property, data and information so that you eventually can run those shiny reports in the long run. So you're at this critical juncture and you might not even know it because you're just going through that wizard to sign up and to get everything in place, connect all the tools. You think, oh, I always ask this question on my sales process of how do they find me? So I'm just going to create a random property to say, what's the referral source? Well, some of those fundamental questions that you might be just sort of kind of throwing away and saying, well, I just need to get this set up right now might be, you know, a real pain in the butt in the long term because of how you're setting up those new properties. And honestly, if I'm being real with you right now, George, there are some fundamental ways of how HubSpot has their default property set that could be ticking time bombs in the long run. So when you're setting up those new custom properties, think of how you want to organize and categorize that data in the long run. So that example that I gave earlier of, you know, referral source, do you want your sales reps to be just typing into an open text field so that you have the information there and you might have some detailed notes, but you have absolutely no way to sort and filter it in the future? Or do you want a dropdown select feature or maybe a multiple choice select so that people can list multiple referral sources? All of these decisions will make or break you in the future when it comes to reporting. And you might not even realize that. So you really need to go in with a strategy and with a long term mindset so that you have that shiny dashboard in mind in the future of this is what I eventually want it to look like. So these are the choices and the decisions that I need to make today so that I have that foundation squarely set and in place. And in terms of, you know, my one big pet peeve of how HubSpot organizes their default properties. George, do you know of the property like closed lost reason?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Isn't that like an open text field from default? Yeah, yes, yes. It's one of my biggest pet peeves in life because then you can't categorize, you can't know how many deals are being lost to a particular reason. So, so many of my clients come back, you know, three months, six months, a year into the process of setting up their portal and they're like, why? Why didn't I do these things first? Why didn't I think this through. So that's, that's one common scenario of setting up this brand new portal and not thinking through how do I want to maintain this, this healthy database, how can I build it for that long term health? Another common scenario is maybe you have this portal that you inherited from someone else. That was, that was my origin story, George. I inherited my very first HubSpot portal from another agency that set it up for me. And it took me six years to figure out how they built it, how I could customize it. It was the longest love affair of my life, George, to work my way through that first portal. It's how I learned HubSpot on the hard knock streets of life. And just going through that process, really, I almost was reverse engineering someone else's architecture and design and it was really challenging. So when you're in that scenario, you have no idea if your database is healthy or not. You have no idea why these properties were set up in this way or that way. So you have to really dive in deep to figure out what can I delete, what can I destroy, what can I replace without really having that infrastructure crumble all around you? So I also find that that's another common scenario that people start thinking about data hydrating when they're looking around. They're like, I don't even know if this place is clean or not because I have just blinders on to, to what's going on around me. I have no idea if this is actually a problem or not. It's kind of like, have you ever been in the kitchen, George, where you've just been in the kitchen so long you don't even realize the trash can smells anymore because you've just become nose blind to the smell.

Just, you just get used to it.

Get used to it. There's a better way, people. You can breathe that stuff. You can, you can make your kitchen smell shiny new and clean. You can make your HubSpot portal also shiny new and clean with just a little bit of effort.

Yeah, it's so funny. There's a couple things that come to mind, Jess, as we're having this conversation today. One is that a lot of people, especially in scenario one, they're like, okay, we did the wizard, we signed up for the platform, and they totally forget about the process and the people. And what you were talking about is you have to understand the process and the people, how they're going to use the process so that you can see in the long run what you're going to report on. The other thing that came to mind when you said it's brand new and it's squeaky clean. It's never brand new and squeaky clean. Listen, I don't care how long you've been using HubSpot, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to go to companies, look for the company HubSpot and tell me if Brian and Maria are in your database. Because it's two contacts that get added day one that shouldn't be. It's, I get it, it's examples. But I can't tell you the amount of HubSpot users that have forgotten to remove the example context from their database and they just sit in there and they need to be gone. It's, it's not even squeaky clean from day one. All right, just, let's keep digging in a little bit here because if people understand the hurdles and they're like, I want to Febreze my database. Let's talk about those quick wins. What are some actionable tactics or steps that marketers can implement immediately? Like they're, they're listening to this, they're going to turn it off once we're done, by the way, because we got more questions we're going to ask. They turn it off and they're like, implement immediately. To improve their data hygiene practices moving.

Forward, you have to make it a process that's repeatable. The biggest challenge that I see, especially in the HubSpot ecosystem, is that so many folks treat a HubSpot portal audit as a one time purchase or a one time activity. They think, okay, I just got this new portal, I'm going to hire an agency to do a portal audit, figure out what's broken, maybe implement some fixes, and then they never think it about again. They never think about it again for at least a few months, years, whatever the time frame might be, you need to adopt a mindset of it's like spring cleaning. And trust me, I suck at spring cleaning. I'm still thinking, oh man, I need to go out and clean my closets. It's, you know, middle of July right now when we're recording this. So people are very, very hesitant to make the time to do this type of boring cleaning work. But if you can create a process doc that says, okay on a regular basis, I'm going to run a report or a list that says how many bounced contacts do I have in my database? People that truly have moved on from their organizations, left their companies, that email address no longer exists in the universe anymore. How many of those contacts are still Floating around my database. Depending on your pricing structure, you could be paying for those contacts in your HubSpot database. It could be costing your company money to keep these non existent email addresses as marketing contacts or as contacts in your database. And that's just a waste. Table stakes. You've got to at least go through your contacts and see who's not deliverable anymore, who has bounced before, who is unsubscribed from my contact. Because if they're not an existing customer, or if they don't have a previous, you know, purchasing relationship with them, if they don't want to hear from you anymore, they don't have a place in your database. You need to Marie Kondo that stuff and says, does this contact record give me joy? Okay, no, throw it away. Delete it, get rid of it from your database. We need to not be afraid to delete contacts that don't have a purpose to being there anymore. And if we can make that a habit, if we can, my favorite thing is to say to clients, okay, pull up your calendar, find whatever day of the week is, you know, most open for you. And on a monthly basis I want you to set an appointment or maybe a quarterly basis, depending on the size of your database. But set an appointment with yourself on a regular basis and say, okay, from Fridays and the first of the month, you know, I'm gonna make sure that I am setting aside an hour to go through, review the lists of contacts that have bounced that have previously unsubscribed, that need to be deleted and go through and make sure that I'm deleting these on a regular basis. So the best companies that I see create that, that culture of cleanliness that really go through and delete on a regular basis anything that shouldn't be there. They do their own audits, they create a process they're gonna follow on a regular basis. Not just with contacts, but maybe it's with landing page, landing pages, maybe it's with you know, other assets they have in their portal. They're going to go through those on a regular basis with intention, see what no longer gives them joy. And if it doesn't give you joy, you're going to get rid of it.

Yeah, I love this idea of a repeatable process, this idea of culture. It is just what we do. And then it's not like this afterthought that many companies have the other thing. It's funny because when you, you mentioned like the people who have unsubscribed and stuff like that, so many Times marketers, they think unsubscribes as like this negative thing and they get sad. I know I'm a weird guy, but when people unsubscribe from my stuff, I get great joy because I really only want to be speaking to people who actually want to hear about the things that we're going to talk about, teach about the things that we're going to do in the community. And so I don't get sad with unsubscribes because it helps me keep that database clean. One thing to remember, Hub Heroes is you're paying for the contacts. If they don't want to hear from you, don't leave them lay around like yesterday's dirty underwear. I know, hopefully nobody does that. That's kind of gross. But let's do this. Hopefully the Hub Heroes community is paying attention to campaigns and customer experience. Hopefully. Hopefully. Jess, that's, that's a prayer I have for anybody who is in the community. But how does data hygiene impact marketing campaigns and the customer experiences that they're trying to create? Can you maybe provide your thoughts on that and maybe some examples or case studies that illustrate, like, look, your campaign and your data or the customer experience and your data. Here's what you need to pay attention to.

Sure. Well, let's use your example of Hub Heroes community. Let's talk about you sending out an exciting new email maybe in advance of little conference called Inbound that's coming up. We're all getting excited to come together in Boston and speak on some stages. We're going to nerd out about HubSpot. So say you have 10,000, 20,000 members in your community and you want to engage with that community to see exactly how many folks are potentially excited for this upcoming conference. And you want to send out an email to see, okay, how many people are going to open it, click on it, engage with it. You know, in the old days we played, paid attention to a lot of vanity metrics, George, where it was sort of like, oh, I have 50,000 people on this email sentence. And therefore I generated 20,000 new contacts in my database this past year. And we would report, report on those numbers to high level CEOs and they would be like, oh, well, we must be doing marketing well because we're reaching all of these contacts. We must be doing so well with our marketing, George, and our campaigns and our marketing efforts because we have so many names on our list. But when we peel back even one layer, some of those contacts again are undeliverable. They've unsubscribed they're no longer engaging with our contact, they haven't opened an email, and gosh knows how long. If we are keeping all of this digital junk, as I like to call it, in our databases, it can really obscure what's a successful campaign versus what is just giving us, you know, feeding that vanity metric mindset. So going back to, we send an email to your database to 10,000 people that we know have had some interaction with hub heroes at some point in the past year. Maybe half of those people are no longer with their organizations and companies. So really, if we have, you know, a quarter of that 10,000 person list, open the email, engage with the contact, you might be saying to yourself, george, man, you know, only a quarter of the people that I sent this to actually opened it, you know, engaged with it. This must not have been engaging content. Therefore I might not do this again. But if we understand that 50% of that list was, you know, dead on arrival, they weren't going to receive that email anyway, then suddenly your actual engagement rate is 50%. Hey, that's a really great number. That's something that I want to do again. That's something that I absolutely want to pursue. So by having all this digital junk, you could actually be watering down your results and you're reporting then to your bosses and your CEOs really watered down metrics so you don't know what's working and what's not working. You really need to make sure that every person in your database as a reason for being there, that they're actively engaged in the communities that they should be engaged with. And if they're not engaged, or if they're no longer a real contact that you can really reach out to, that you delete them from the database. Because some, sometimes people are like sentimental for the past engagements. Be like, oh, remember that email we sent back in 2019? All these people opened it, all these people clicked on it. We're gonna go back and maybe revitalize that, do that again one day. But do you really care? I mean, 2023 right now, so several years later, we don't go back and look at historical data nearly as often as we think we do. It's much, much, much more important that we have a solid list of people that we are reaching out to that really want to receive the communication that we are sending out on a regular basis so that we can accurately measure, hey, when we a B test this or when we try something out different next month, if we try to engage in this New way. Can we really have a sense of, did that, you know, strike a chord with my community or did it fall on deaf ears? If we can't answer that with confidence, then there's probably something wrong with the hygiene ever lists.

Yeah, I love this so much because it comes to mind. Data hygiene, delivering your C suite watered down metrics does not equal, you know, more money in your budget, a pay raise for you in the future. But if you keep that database clean and then all of a sudden the metrics are actually doper than they once looked, now it's more budget, it's a raise because marketing is crushing it. So moral of the story is, don't be a digital hoarder. Just make sure you're cleaning that database. Now, we talked about campaigns and customer experience, Jess, in that last one, but I want to dig a little bit. I call it deeper, but I'm even gonna just call it like, broader marketing strategies. How does data hygiene tie into broader marketing strategies such as personalization, targeting, segmentation? Like, can you explain how clean data directly contributes to the success of these, what one might call micro initiatives in your marketing and sales efforts?

It's funny that you bring up personalization tokens and, and the ability to use the database in, or you use the data in your database to create these micro moments where you create that connection on a mass scale. George, we had this conversation. We were creating notes for this, this podcast. I mentioned that, you know, you had in the notes to call me Jessica. And I said, you know, the only people that call me Jessica are, you know, my mom or my fiance. Whenever I'm in trouble, they're like, jessica, what'd you do? And it, it's not that it has negative connotations my name, but my friends and the people that know me well call me Jess. So there is so much power in a person's name. We can instantly turn them on and be like, oh, they know me. They understand me. They are really deepening this relationship. Or we can instantly turn them off. So no matter how amazing your email content is, George, if I send a email to you and it has the wrong name or high first name in that subject line, you know, let's. Let's all have that moment of how many times we've screwed that up before. You're instantly turning off that relationship. You instantly look like a fool that doesn't know what they're doing. So, so much of what we want to leverage HubSpot for the advanced tactics of personalization tokens. And you can really do Some wild and crazy stuff with it. But I caution my clients all the time saying, do you have confidence that your data is 100% accurate? You know, we can do this crazy personalized approach at a mass scale, but only if you really believe that your data is up to the task. If it's not, scale it back. Maybe only reach out to 100 contacts that you have, run the list, run the analysis to know that they have those personalization tokens properly filled out with the right data and right information. But if you try to scale that up on a more mass scale and you have any sort of messiness in your data, you're going to do more harm than good. When you try to reach out to them and you call them by their wrong first name or you have a typo in their name. And half the time it might not even be your fault, George, because half the time people are entering their own first names or their own information when they fill out a form on your website. We're all fallible. Sometimes I have a typo on my own name. So just because I misspell my name when I was originally filling out a form, suddenly you look like an idiot because you're misspelling my name when I'm reaching back out to me, it's not your fault. But it does destroy a little bit of trust with that brand when they make these faux pas. So you really have to have confidence in the data and, you know, believe that that data is accurate before you try to apply these advanced tips and tricks for personalization.

I love that you tied this into trust because data hygiene, keeping a clean database is one less excuse to erode the trust. And we're always trying to build that. That's when we talk about content marketing and inbound marketing and social media marketing and brand and voice and tone. We're literally trying to build the trust and then not paying attention to these small things. This thing that we don't pay attention to a lot, the data that we have, the hygie aging, the cleanliness of it can erode all of that hard work. And, and it's really interesting to me too, to when you said the power of a name, just the power of the data. And also I love that you talked about, man, my brain went when you said this, do it small and do it right. Right. And I have a buddy who says how you do small things is how you do all things. But if you let your database just run with it at first and all of a sudden you're just, you're you're creating a hot pile of like in your database. It's not, it's. You know what I'm saying, people? It's not a good thing. So, Jess, let's dive in even deeper. I've alluded to marketing and sales when it comes to data hygiene. And so I want to dive into the world of, dare I say, lead scoring and the lead handoff. So how does data hygiene affect, you know, your lead scoring and your lead handoff between marketing and sales teams? Does it make an impact or not? Like, should we be paying attention to it?

And we should absolutely be paying attention to George. One of my favorite favorite stories was I was working with this client and we were doing sort of this standard check that I do in when I'm working with new client. We go through their properties and say, okay, what are the properties that you're capturing currently in your database? What are the questions you're asking on forms? How are you gathering that extra pieces of information that can really help you score a lead to say, are they a good fit for your potential services? So I was going through all of these properties that were previously built in this portal that this client had essentially inherited from either an agency or another person whose company, actually, I think it was a double whammy of another person in his company had previously worked with an agency design a strategy, and now none of these people were still around. So you're just operating blind. So we're going through his, the properties in his back end to say, okay, what do we have to actually work with here? You know, what are we looking at? So he started going through all these properties of like, oh, we're capturing that. That's great. I would love to see exactly, you know, when, you know what, what is going beyond this but like type of company size, what's the decision making power that this person has? All these things, they're so fundamental. When you're trying to get with the right decision maker in the right room to identify is this person really going to be an opportunity worth pursuing or is this something that, you know, my sales team is going to roll their eyes at and be like another intern just doing research for, you know, an MBA paper or something like that. We're going through all these questions. He was so excited by all of the different properties that had previously built in his portal. And then we ran an analysis to say, okay, but how many contacts in your database have this great property that you say is essential to your lead scoring? How many contacts actually have this property known and the Truth is that all of those wonderful properties that were essential to their lead scoring strategy that were the foundation of how their current lead scoring structure was, was built. Those properties weren't even being collected anymore. They were built in into old forms on a previous website that had been retired. So they'd been all, you know, part of an old strategy. So he was all excited saying, oh, yeah, if we had all this information, we'd be able to score and understand exactly which leads we should hand over to sales. But because it was an old strategy, because it was really valuable information that wasn't actively being collected, none of it was useful. It was completely a rabbit hole that we went down and with such disappointing results. So it's so fundamental that you look at things like the structural elements of your database. Check out your HubSpot lead scoring property to see what are the pluses and minuses that have been previously set up. Are those things that are actively being collected, or were they used on previous forms that are no longer being collected? And then beyond that, what are some old properties that we might need to reintroduce to some of those contact forms to reintroduce to other elements of the process? Maybe it doesn't have to be a contact form. Maybe it's just a question that your sales team includes on a sales playbook that they are then filling out after the fact to capture data in that way. There's so many ways to get great data into your database, but if you're not asking the right questions, or even if you previously asked the right questions but aren't asking them on a consistent basis, moving forward, you have this. This false sense of security that your database should be collecting all this great information and data, that your lead scoring should be built on all that great information, but the right data actually isn't making its way into the tool. So therefore, your lead scoring is set up but not actually being utilized because so many properties that form, that foundation aren't being leveraged.

Yeah, Jess, as you're talking through that part, my brain is screaming like, are you paying attention? Are you paying attention to how the engine is running? You can't ignore that. There's like a knocking sound as you're driving down the road, like, stuff is broke. It's going to break even worse if you don't stop and fix it. And, you know, let me just throw this out there, too. If you're listening to this podcast and you're loving this interview and you want to get access to more Hub Hero Sidekick strategies, make sure you Head over To Community Hub Heroes.com Sign up for the all access pass and you'll get all of the episodes because we don't put all of them in the podcast, but you'll get access to all of the episodes that we've created for the community in there. Now, Jess, back to you and this idea of paying attention to the engine and checking your oil before the oil light comes on. How often should marketers conduct data audits and cleanups? Like, are there any recommended timelines or schedules to follow? Like, how do we, how do we do that maintenance or make that part of the culture as well?

George, it's every 7,000 miles. It's in your own image manual. Come on. But it totally depends on the size of your database and how much new information is coming into it. So if you're, you know, a really relationship driven company, maybe you only sell a few huge deals per year, but you need to track those longer sales cycles. You might be able to get away with doing your, you know, data maintenance and cleanup on a quarterly basis, but I would still recommend putting that time on your calendar, making that, you know, appointment with yourself yourself to go to the dentist, get the hygiene checkup, make sure that everything makes sense. Look at key things like the properties that are currently being used and collected on your forms, the properties that your sales team are regularly updating with that new information. See if there's anything that should be being collected but aren't being updated properly. I always love to run a quick filter in my contacts page to say, okay, let's just see, this is an essential field. How many contacts currently have this property known? One of the key properties that I always look at with with different clients is how many people have a first page scene that is known. You might have a database with 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 contacts, but I've seen instances where less than a thousand actually have a first page scene that's known. And George, what does that mean when you don't have a first page scene that's known?

Well, they don't know what you do because they ain't been to your website.

Which is exactly, you might be reporting on those vanity metrics. If we have 50,000 contacts in our database that we're reaching out to in regular basis. But if we don't know what pages they're viewing on our website, if they're not cookie, if they're not being tracked, then part of the entire reason to get HubSpot is null and void because we can't actually track their user behavior on our website. So you need to be thinking through what are those key fundamental properties that I should know about a contact in my database and how many of those contacts actually have those key pieces of information known. Those key pieces become your lead scoring. So on a regular basis you should be checking to see does my current picture of my ideal, not my ideal client, but my ideal contact record actually align with the, you know, the properties I'm scoring against in my HubSpot lead score. So do we have the right data in the right places? Are the, is the data being used to score those contacts appropriately? If contacts are scoring lowly or they're bouncing or unsubscribing, are we getting rid of them on a regular basis? All of these are really good habits to get into and make sure that you're doing it on a regular basis. Like I said, for longer sales cycles, with databases that may not be getting that influx of leads on a regular basis, you can get away with quarterly. But for anyone who is collecting leads on a healthy clip every single month, you should do this on a monthly basis that the task never becomes insurmountable. And I will say merging contacts and companies is another key element that people forget to do. But duplicates do exist no matter how clean you try to get your database. So definitely add that into your hygiene routine.

Yeah. Which by the way, hub heroes, if you listen to that last section, I hope you heard in your brain, I should probably go create a list of people first page scene. I might want to create a list of forms submitted. You know, more than one, any of the like important engagement measurement items that are at your fingertips in HubSpot, you might want to have a mirrored list to where you can celebrate as a team or you can put your head on your desk and cry and try to figure out how you can actually get those lists to fill up with more people anyway.

George, there's no crying in HubSpot. Very much like there's no crying in baseball. We can't cry about these problems that they exist. I will say expectation setting is key when you're pursuing a different hygiene strategy. If your leadership team is used to seeing a certain number of leads in your database on a regular basis and they're used to seeing that number go up and up and up and never go down. If you suddenly do a massive portal clean out and you cut the number of leads that are real and actionable in your database in half, people might have questions. So communication is always, always a good strategy when you're looking to really seriously do an overhaul on a portal because you never know which metrics someone might be looking at. So this again, we know it's a great thing to go in and clean out all the digital junk and have that Marie Kondo moment where you're like, this no longer gives me joy. But if you don't explain what you're doing, we can have some consequences with the C suite. So definitely make sure that everyone's on the same page of the why, the why behind data hygiene, the why behind cutting your metrics and hap and actually saying, this is a better thing. This is a great thing. So definitely communicate with your team before you make any of these massive changes.

I love that we talked about communication. It is very important. I also lesson learned for me, don't cry over spilled orange milk. Okay, that's a bad. That's a bad dad joke. We'll move forward. We'll move forward. So I'm sure people have gained tips along the way, but I really want to dive in because one of the things that we're trying to do with this show and dare I say, just Hub heroes in general, is be able to talk about strategies, mindsets and best practices. Strategies, mindsets and best practices. So how can, you know, marketers cultivate a culture? We've teased that multiple times through this episode as well. How can marketers cultivate a culture of data cleanliness within their organization? Are there specific strategies, mindsets, best practices that can help foster this culture?

Idea, Jess so the key thing that you kind of have to keep in mind when looking at a culture of data hygiene is, is your marketing and sales team even on the same page with what information is important when it comes to capturing lead information? I've worked with so many organizations where marketing is like, well, we need to know what their buyer Persona is and we need to know, you know, which what the size of their organization. We need to know all of these key fundamental properties that they're collecting in the early stages of the funnel. And then by the time that lead gets passed over to sales, sales is having a completely different conversation because none of their early stage questions were asked in the marketing process. So they're almost restarting the relationship once we actually book that discovery call to say, okay, no, this is actually all the information that I need to get started to have this sales conversation with you. So the best tip or trick that I can start with is just have a conversation between what's important to marketing, what's important to sales, and really dive into the why, why does marketing care about these pieces of information? Why does sales care about these pieces of information? Can we ensure that no matter which, which team is touching that contact, that those key pieces of information are being gathered and collected? Because if we create one unified experience for that customer on their customer journey and they don't feel like they're talking to two completely different departments to, you know, two completely different teams that might not live on the same planet, you really have to think through what do we need to push the ball forward, what's the data that needs to be captured, and can we run the type of reports that we need to make truly data driven decisions at the end of the day, if we can't, if marketing is getting stuck because sales isn't asking or capturing, capturing the right questions or information as we get to those later stages of the process, then we're never going to close the loop on what marketing qualified leads became sales qualified leads that eventually turn into customers. We're always going to be missing those gaps. So you really need to just get on the same page with your sales team, say, okay, these are the key pieces of information that we mutually agree are beneficial to both marketing and sales, and that we're going to make this commitment to capture, capture these either in the early stages of the funnel or the later stages of the funnel. But we're going to say that these core properties are always going to be updated and accurate and then we can run reports and see where our educated guess is correct. I can't run those reports. If we can't prove that it worked, then it might as well not have happened. But the key thing is at the end of the day, you come up with one iteration, you have one meeting where you align on the same page, and then before you leave that conference room or that zoom room, you set the follow up meeting to confirm that it's actually still working for people. So many folks nix the follow up where we actually check in again a month, two months later to say, hey, are these pieces of information still important to us? Is that data still the most essential piece of the puzzle that we need to push the ball forward? Because if we're not reviewing and revising on a regular basis, then we're just going to keep making our database a little bit messier and to the point where it really becomes a crisis and then we have to take drastic measures to clean it all out again.

Hub heroes, I hope you heard the little tiny tidbit of information hidden amongst all the other great stuff there. If you can't Run a report on it. It probably didn't happen, or it seems like it didn't happen. That was so good. Right in there, Jess. You know, I want to go back to our original goal. We were going to make data hygiene and dental hygiene fun and exciting today. And in my book, there's nothing more exciting than legal and ethical conversations. Oh, I'm kidding. But I'm not kidding about the question because I do want to tie data cleanliness, data hygiene to legal and ethical considerations. So are there any legal or ethical considerations that marketers should consider when it comes to data hygiene? How can they ensure compliance, like with privacy regulations and all sorts of things like that if that's the world they live in?

It's, it's so true, George. That is the world that so many folks live in and they might not even be realizing that they live in that world. I mean, so long ago when GDPR became, you know, this thing that the marketing sphere had to deal with, everyone was like, ah, that's in Europe. We have to deal with that. That's like all on them. But so many states are coming up with their own versions of GDPR compliance. I know California has been leading the charge on it, but it's not just California. There are plenty other states. You know, New York has some laws in the books that are coming into to full fruition. And every single state is really evaluating what does data privacy look like for us in today's day and age. So just because you might not fit into this box currently doesn't mean that that will still be the case one year from now. And we might not be able to make data hygiene sexy. But I will say if we had that danger component of what happens when my database is so messy that I have no idea who I should be, you know, deleting on a regular basis because of legal requirements, you know, living on the edge and maybe getting that, that hefty fine or non compliance issue where suddenly your business owes, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. That's, that's a danger element that I certainly would pay attention to if I were you. So I'm not a lawyer. I am not anyone that should any, I'm not anyone that anyone should seek legal advice from. But I will say data hygiene and cleanliness can lead to being able to, to say with confidence, yes, I know exactly why every single person in my database is there. I know they have a legal right to exist there. If they don't have that legal right, I know exactly how to clean all those folks out and remove that legal risk. If you can't say those things with confidence today, how can you start chipping away at that problem to either speak with a legal professional, say, hey, what do I need to do here? Or to start organizing, cleaning out your database to say, okay, these are the people that have truly opted in to receive communication from me, and I know that they want to be there and I want them there too. If you can't say that about every person in your database, you have to start thinking about those strategies of how can I get people to opt in? How can I get folks to really raise their hand and say, yes, I actually do want to be receiving your content, or you can have access to my cookies if they haven't explicitly given that permission to you. It may not make sense or matter to you in this moment, but as soon as your particular state passes is a data privacy law, it's going to matter a lot then. So we have to just assume that this is the way of the world now, that it might not be our turn yet, but our turn is coming. So you really need to have these considerations in the back of your head when you're building out your database to say, okay, do I turn on the GDPR compliance functionality and HubSpot that has it built in, even if I don't live in a GPR region? Because I know that data compliance is going to be an issue for me and my business in the short run or maybe in the long run. And I want to be prepared, I want to be ahead of that curve.

Yeah, it's funny, as you were talking to that section, I was transported back about, oh, I don't know, maybe 40, 30 some years ago when my mom would come in and yell at me for cleaning my, you know, not cleaning my room, which was never fun, by the way. It never turned out to be a good scenario. And you know what else doesn't turn out to be a good scenario? A big fat fine that doesn't turn out to be a good scenario either. So you got it. Like, if it's fear based and it helps you keep your database clean, then by all means keep it clean. Now, Jessica or Jess, one of the things I want to do is I want to tie into, and you've alluded the whole time of, like, if you can't measure it, it probably didn't happen or it didn't seem like it happened. And, and you've met, you mentioned reporting a couple times along the way. So how can marketers measure the impact of their data hygiene efforts. Are there any metrics or KPIs that help them assess the health of their data and the effectiveness of their like, best practices of keeping their room clean, if you will?

Sure. I think that the key thing that you can keep in mind is what are those core elements, core properties that I need to have filled out to really feel like I know this contact or customer? It's probably not just first name, last name, email address. So if we know that we want a fuller picture of that contact and we want them to volunteer that information, you can almost, you know, divide it up and say, Okay, I have 50,000 contacts in my database. I know that of those 30,000 are, you know, non balanced, actually actively engaged contacts. And then of those 30,000, maybe 10 are engaged. But they also have at least these core properties filled out between the marketing and sales process. You can almost break it down to say, you know, when is that picture of the contact truly in focus? When are they coming into that moment of clarity when you can truly see them, evaluate them and see if they're willing, you're willing to work with them. So you can almost break it up into those stages of, you know, in those early stages it's just emails in a database that we may or may not be able to deliver to. Then you can, you know, celebrate the fact that you identify which ones we can deliver to. We're actually going to shrink the size of our database, but it's going to be more distilled and condensed and something that we can actually engage with. And then of those 30,000 that are still distilled and condensed, how can we make sure that we really understand which are the complete picture that we're looking for? So I would start to run reports to say, okay, we have this many total names in our database, this many core contacts that are people that are engaged with us on a regular basis. And maybe of this small subset, these are those really ideal fit customers that are having not just the properties filled out, but they also have the right information in those properties. They have the right, you know, customer base, the right industry, the right, you know, business size so that, you know that they might actually be in that good spot to eventually do business with you. So I would start to look at those properties to see how can we, how can we see the value of our database and how can we educate our larger company to, to say, no, we're going to intentionally shrink the size of our database, but it's going to help us get better data, get better metrics so that when we Send out an email we know with confidence it's going to the right audience. We can really target and tailor our messaging because we know exactly the people that are going out to on that list and that we really want to engage these core customers, these people that are in focus to make sure that we are really engaging with them properly because they're our best shot at doing business.

Such good advice. So as we land the plane, Jess, what's the hashtag? One thing, meaning what's the one thing you hope the audience takes away from today's session?

If you do nothing else by the end of this, this listening to this podcast, I want you to go into your calendar and figure out when is your data hygiene appointment with yourself every month or every quarter. I want you to pull that up right now as you're listening to this podcast and say, okay, okay, Justin. George told me to do this. So I'm going to make a commitment that on, you know, the first Friday of every month, for one hour, I'm going to go through and clean up my database just a little bit every time. If you can instill that habit, if you can be disciplined in that process, you are only going to be stronger and better for the future. So if you do nothing else, just start the habit. It's like going to the gym. George. I'm trying to motivate myself to get on the treadmill tonight and I really don't want to do it, but if I make that date with myself on the calendar, it's much more likely that I'm gonna actually, you know, go, go for that jog. It's the same thing with data hygiene. You don't want to do it, I don't want to do it. But you all need to do it to stay happy and healthy. So just, just treat it like going to the gym. So make that mid year New Year's commitment.

I love that. Be happy and healthy. And then I love too. It's. It's like anything in life. Set a goal, have habits, and then be disciplined. Jess, if people want to connect with you, where can they? What works best?

If they want to connect with me, I am on LinkedIn. I'm trying to get more engaged with, you know, engaging with that community. I am definitely going to be at Inbound this year, so if you have a chance, hit me up in person. Happy to talk about HubSpot or any data hygiene elements or anything else within the ecosystem.

Sounds good. Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of this episode. Episode. Make sure you head over to community.hubheroes.com to get more episodes of your sidekick strategies. And of course, in between now and then, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and focus on getting 1% better each and every day.