5 Ways You Can Improve Your Client Database Right Now

Your client contact database is the most important thing in your business. Whether you use a CRM or a notebook, consistent and systematized communication with your past clients, potential clients, and allied resources is paramount for building lasting relationships and creating repeat business. This can be difficult without a properly maintained database. In this article we will look at 5 things you can do right now to improve your client contact database and start communicating effectively.

This one kind of seems like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised at how many times you’ve taken John Smith’s information and created multiple contacts for the same person in your phone or your client database. If you have an iPhone, this is done by simply going into your contacts and looking below where it shows your information and says “My Card”, there will be a link there that says “duplicates found” if you have duplicates. Click the link and see which contacts are duplicates and which are unique. You can choose to merge contacts into one card or keep them separate. Similarly, most CRMs have a built-in function within the software that will allow you to seek out and eliminate the duplicate contacts. If you don’t have this function or your client database is in a notebook or a shoebox, you will have to go through everything manually.

Either way you do this, a clutter-free client database will allow you to see who you’re communicating with and eliminate confusion when creating a strategic plan for delivering content.

2. Update contacts with incomplete or incorrect information

If your emails bounce, try to find an updated email address by finding the person on social media or by phoning the person and asking them directly. If they’re on LinkedIn, there’s a good chance you can get their most up-to-date email address. You could also use Facebook messenger. An easy script for phone, text, or messenger is this… “Hello [first name], I hope you’re doing well. I am updating my database and I want to make sure that I have your info correct, and you have my info correct. Is your email address still [email@address.com]?” That’s the gist anyway. You don’t have to sound robotic.

Are your texts not going through? Again, try to get their new phone number. If there’s one thing social media has done for us, it’s allowed us to find people a bit easier than it used to be. You can send an email, messenger, LinkedIn, etc and double check that their phone number is the same. Here’s the thing… if you can’t do either of these, DELETE them from your database. That’s right, get rid of them. There’s no use keeping people you can’t communicate with in your database to clog it up. Don’t delete them from social media, but keep them out of your CRM.

This process should happen on a systematic basis. Every month, 2 months, or quarter, just go through your contacts. Fire off a text to someone you haven’t heard from in a while. If it comes back undeliverable, you know you need to update their information. On the flip side, if they respond, setup a coffee or lunch with them. Stay in front of people and they won’t forget you when they need your products or services.

3. Tag people you have communicated with in the last 6 months

The content you create for your communication campaigns will look differently depending on how recently you’ve spoken with your contacts. It’s good to segregate contacts in a variety of different ways, but one of the best things to do is ask yourself “when was the last time I spoke with that person?”. You can create a field in your CRM or spreadsheet where you record the date of your last communication. So, every time you speak with someone, open it up and change the date. You can then filter your client database by that field to see who it is that you haven’t spoken with in a while. Come up with a special piece that is directly tailored to re-engage these people and get them back into the “recent” category.

This is where it’s important to have a super granular content strategy. You will need a wide variety of content pieces aimed at different stages of relationships and varied interests. You need to know your client database extremely well in order to segregate it in this way. This is one reason why feeding your database new data every time you speak with some is an integral part of daily business operations.

4. Split your client database into 2 categories

The foundation of your client database can be broken down into 2 very generic categories:

1. Mets – These are people you have met in person (or I suppose these days, people you have interacted with on Zoom). There is no pre-requisite for how well you know someone in your met list. It’s not an indicator of relationship status. It’s just as simple as it seems.
2. Haven’t Mets – Ding ding ding! You’ve guessed it, these are people you have not met in person (or interacted with on Zoom). Again, not a relationship indicator, but a simple yes or no. Have you met them? Most of the time, these are people who filled in a contact form on your website or landed in the top level of a sales funnel.

Your goal for communicating with mets is simple, keep learning about them and stay at the top of their mind as someone who knows things that can help them. Your goals for the haven’t mets is to convert them into mets. Proving your value to haven’t mets is the trick here. They will either “unsubscribe” or want more. If you give them valuable content, they will be excited to see your communication campaign in their inbox and be more likely to use your products and services. Again, the key here is making sure you know as much as you can about the people in your contact list.

5. Add new people you have interacted with recently