5 Data Hygiene Best Practices for Better Nonprofit Marketing

Data is the foundation and future of nonprofit marketing. Charitable organizations no longer have to guess what supporters are looking for or how to reach them—data can provide definitive answers about your audience.

However, constituent data must be up-to-date to be truly valuable. Your nonprofit should be confident in the accuracy of your database and its ability to inform your marketing practices.

In this guide, we’ll cover tips for maximizing data hygiene—otherwise known as the cleanliness or tidiness of your data. When your data is orderly and error-free, you can ensure you base important marketing decisions on accurate data points. 

1. Audit your Database

Your database should be your source of truth for information about your donors, volunteers, and other supporters. Start by surveying the current state of your database with the following steps:

1. Create Data Management Priorities. Just as your marketing strategy is guided by goals, so should your data strategy. Translate your marketing objectives into data-related goals to provide focus to your database audit. For example, if you’re hosting a capital campaign, you’ll want to focus on cleaning major donor data to ensure it’s accurate for your outreach efforts.
   
2. Unify Your Data. Data hygiene includes identifying inconsistencies in your data entry process. Any variety in formatting or abbreviations (like “Street” versus “St.”) can make it difficult to use your data, confuse team members, or result in duplicate records. 
   
3. Identify Inaccuracies. With the help of an externally conducted audit or a Data Quality Report, you can assess the current state of your data. Take note of any problem areas and how much time you’ll need to resolve each issue.
   
4. Meet with Your Team. Conclude your audit by debriefing your team. Share your newfound data priorities, any major issues you’ve found in your database, and how team members will help solve those problems.

Investing the time at the beginning of the data hygiene process to refine your data approach will set you off on the right foot and streamline the remaining steps. 

2. Filter out any Inaccuracies

With your audit complete, it’s time to resolve your noted inaccuracies. Getting rid of incorrect and unnecessary data ensures you reserve resources and marketing materials for your most engaged supporters.

This step typically involves the following actions:

• Removing or archiving data from minors, deceased supporters, and people on “do not contact” lists.
• Using an email scrubbing tool to highlight outdated and incorrect email addresses.
• Merging duplicate records to avoid targeting the same people multiple times.

Filtering out data inaccuracies is a crucial element of proper data stewardship—practices meant to ensure data is timely, valid, unique, consistent, and accurate. Remember these descriptors when attending to your database to ensure all stored information is high-quality and useful for your marketing efforts.

3. Conduct a Data Append

The last element of data stewardship is completeness. If you notice during your audit that you’re missing important supporter information, your nonprofit could benefit from a data append.

AccuData defines a data append as “the process of supplementing the information within a brand’s internal database with additional data from external sources.” This process entails uploading your current data to a data append platform, matching records with entries in an external database, selecting the data you’d like to append, and extracting that information from an external source to add to your database.

Your nonprofit can append a variety of different data types, including:

• Phone numbers
• Social media handles
• Email addresses
• Net worth
• Employment status
• Giving history

Let’s say you’re developing an email marketing campaign. After all, according to NXUnite by Nexus Marketing, email marketing has a high return on investment (ROI). 

To amplify the impact of your campaign, you should ensure you have email addresses for as many supporters as possible. Appending email addresses allows you to fill in gaps in your database and target a wider audience in your email marketing efforts.

4. Implement Data Hygiene Procedures

Data hygiene doesn’t end once your database is complete with accurate information. It’s an ongoing process since you’ll continuously add new data as your support base grows.

Instead of waiting for data problems to arise, it saves you time in the long run to implement an effective data hygiene routine. Implement these practices to make data hygiene a priority:

• Create Data Entry Protocols. When you standardize your data entry process, you prevent mistakes from occurring in the first place. Make it clear how you’d like team members to input new data, whether that entails regulations for entering phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, or title abbreviations. For example, you may prefer that your team use the abbreviations “St.” and “Rd.” instead of “Street” and “Road” for mailing addresses.
  
• Train your Team in Data Hygiene Procedures. Host a meeting that informs employees how to enter, clean, and analyze data following your organization’s best practices. That way, you can answer any questions team members may have and clear up any confusion before implementing your data hygiene procedures.
  
• Implement a Data Policy Manager. If you want to ensure your data hygiene procedures stick, the simplest action to take is embedding your data entry rules into the database. Then, at the point of data entry, the rule is there to remind you.
  
• Limit Extraneous Data Collection. By focusing on the quality of your data points rather than quantity, you can avoid removing excess data later on. If you find your database is filled with unnecessary information, you may want to start asking supporters for fewer pieces of personal data, such as their middle names, unused contact information, and communication preferences. 

The ultimate goal of your marketing efforts is likely to engage your supporters and get them involved in your cause. When you work data hygiene best practices into your routine, you can devote more time to supporter engagement initiatives and mission-critical activities.

5. Work with a Data Provider

While it’s important to prioritize the cleanliness of your database, you don’t have to tackle data hygiene on your own. Your nonprofit can partner with a team of data experts, such as Andar Software's data experts, to develop a customized data approach that fits your organization’s specific needs.

The right data provider will offer a variety of data services, such as:

• Data appends
• Data hygiene assistance
• Predictive analytics
• Digital marketing campaign expertise

Working with a data provider is an investment in your marketing potential. As a result, you can boost your marketing efforts and reserve your own time for your mission and beneficiaries.

Spread your message and achieve your marketing goals by diving head first into data hygiene best practices. This process will allow you to retain current supporter relationships and expand your network using accurate, relevant data points. So, you can take your marketing to new heights and gather even more support for your cause.

Gabrielle Perham, MBA | Director of Marketing & Sales Operations | Deep Sync

Gabrielle is the Director of Marketing and sales Operations for Deep Sync. She joined the organization in 2017 and brings 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, communications, sales enablement, and digital marketing. With a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done attitude and a big-picture mindset, Gaby loves solving marketing and business challenges. She earned both a B.S. in Marketing and an M.B.A. in Marketing Management from the University of Tampa. Gaby enjoys spending time with her fiercely outspoken daughter; hiking and kayaking; rocking out in the first row of a live show; and giving back to her local community.