Our superheroes battle a number of villains, but clutter is one of the biggest. After all, cluttered marketing automation instances aren’t nearly as efficient or as accurate.
Clutter can sneak in a number of ways. Maybe you inherited a messy instance. Maybe your database has grown by leaps and bounds and you can’t keep up with it all. Maybe your company doesn’t have a policy in place to keep your instance clean and you don’t know where to begin to fix it.
Whatever the reason, let’s harness the power of one of Netflix’s favorite personalities—tidying expert Marie Kondo—to clean it out!
The KonMari Method encourages people to get rid of items that no longer spark joy for them. Basically, if something doesn’t speak to your heart, thank it for being part of your life, and send it on its way.
How can we apply this to marketing automation? Use these 5 tips to KonMari your instance:
1. Review what’s in your instance and determine what can be archived
Got programs, assets, and fields that you aren’t using anymore—and that aren’t attached to anything else that’s currently running? Archive them!
2. Get rid of inactive leads
Don’t just delete them, though! Instead, merge duplicate records so that you can keep all of their field and activity history intact. Then, determine how duplicates are creeping their way into your instance in the first place so that the problem doesn’t continue to add villainous clutter.
3. Clean up user roles and permissions
Make sure that the people who have access to your instance truly need it. And, make sure that everyone who does have access is aware of the best practices and inner workings of your instance so that they don’t inadvertently do things to create more clutter.
4. Create solid structures
Coming up with a specific folder structure will make it easier and faster to navigate your instance. So will creating a specific naming convention for all of your programs and assets. After all, how do you ever expect to find anything if you have no clue where it could be or what it’s name is?
5. Normalize your data
Our superheroes like to call this the “Data Washing Machine.” In order to keep your instance as clean as possible, you’ve got to normalize data that could be showing in a variety of ways—and bogging down your entire instance.
For example, you may have US-based leads with a Country listing of “US”, “USA”, “United States”, or other variations you haven’t even thought of. With data like that, think of the issues that could pop up if you try to run a campaign based on location! Remember, dirty data in = dirty data out.
Come up with ways to avoid this. In our US example, our superheroes would make sure that all of the form fields are uniform. We would probably even take it a step further by making all of the Country fields dropdown boxes instead of text fields. That way, we could pick our favorite US variation and use it in every dropdown box so that every US-based lead comes in the same way.
One final note—While these quick tips are powerful, you can really tackle clutter by checking out all of the insights in our recent webinar, “Strategies for Sparking Joy in Your Marketing Automation Instance.” Click here to watch the replay on demand.
