I’ve known David Brady – the serial entrepreneur specialising in professional services marketing technology – for more years than either of us care to acknowledge (but see the articles below if you’re interested). Vuture – his first martech contribution in the digital marketing space – is a recognised and trusted system for many professional services firms. So it was with great pleasure to meet him recently with his business partner and Vuture Co-Founder, Paul McAsey – to learn about his new system which tackles a challenge that just about every professional service firm experiences – that of clean data. So here is a Marketing technology system review – Clean contact data with Cirrom.
The importance of clean contact data
From the earliest days of my career in the technology sector (then called computing) the rule of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) is ingrained in my memory. And I don’t know the source of the alarming statistic that a database decays at 30% per annum but it is also etched on my psyche. The statistic is widely quoted – see, for example, Data Decay and Data Enrichment – DataScienceCentral.com. (Although HubSpot has suggested the figure is closer to 22% with data from 2013-14 Database Decay Simulation (hubspot.com)).
Data is the lifeblood of both traditional and digital marketing. Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems are the foundation upon which the success of professional services firms’ marketing relies. Those with roles in CRM, digital marketing, analytics and data stewardship will live and breathe the challenge of data quality and data compliance (GDPR). Yet all marketing and business development professionals will know the significance of clean contact data – whether for strategic analysis, segmentation and targeting right through to effective campaign implementation and measuring marketing effectiveness and return on investment.
Cirrom offers a new standard in clean contact data. Its mission is to eliminate bad contact data in professional services firms and make CRM and marketing teams more successful. Hooray to that!
Whether you are tackling a major cleanse of your existing contact data, cleaning data ready for transfer to a new CRM or managing data quality on a day-to-day basis Cirrom appears to have the answer. So one-off projects and licencing options are available.
Here’s what I learned from a quick demonstration.
The Data Dashboard
Once your data has been processed by Cirrom you are presented with an elegant and clear dashboard.
It shows how many contact records are in the dataset – including how many are likely to be duplicates or orphaned (no associated organisation). It also shows the number of organisations (or accounts) that are associated with those contacts. It presents you with a world map where you can use geotagging to deep dive into the contact data for particular locations.
It provides an overall score of the quality of the data – the percentage of contacts with data issues – and also shows how this can be improved with Cirrom. This provides you with instant data to show what impact you might achieve with a Cirrom cleanse (and no doubt to calculate the return on investment of improving the data).
Cirrom then shows a breakdown of the types of issues within the dataset – for example, those with email, naming or location issues.
Automatic data correction – Mail, Name and Location
For email corrections, Cirrom checks MX domain records to suggest changes. So where, for example, manual data entry has entered .om the system will correct it to .com. It also intelligently picks up spelling mistakes – for example, adding missing or incorrect letters or full stops in email addresses. For this it refers to its own extensive (and ever growing) database of known email formats for different organisations (this dataset currently has hundreds of thousands of known formats).
Users are able to set their own standards, requirements and rules (for example, allowing Cirrom to automatically update email records that hard bounced if the system is more than 70% sure that its proposed correction is reliable).
For name corrections, the system is smart in detecting incorrect or transposed first names and surnames. Whether by checking against email addresses, or LinkedIn records or detecting common name errors that occur during data imports from spreadsheets and other systems.
Location nomalisations (i.e. consistent spelling and upper/lower case use), additions or corrections are made through a variety of means: Checking the domain addresses or cross-referencing with other data items such as telephone pre-fixes.
Cirrom also provides data enrichment by referring to external sources such as Dun & Bradstreet and Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes Standard industrial classification of economic activities (SIC) – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Other points about Cirrom
Cirrom integrates will all the major CRM systems including InterAction and SalesForce.
To achieve these amazing feats, Cirrom uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology and also machine learning (ML) as it constantly updates its own databases and processes, so it becomes smarter with the more data it cleans.
Cirrom also maintains activity logs so there is effectively an audit trail of what corrections have been made with an option to restore old records should that ever be required.
The time and cost that will be saved are obvious. And it will free up those in data management roles to invest their time in more interesting and productive endeavours whether that is in acquiring other types of data or leveraging it more effectively.
The team advise me that whilst Cirrom has been used successfully in UK and US law firms (see the case study of TLT below) it was designed for use by all professional services firms. Pricing is dependent on the number of contacts/integrations – Average firm data projects have between 20,000 for small projects to million plus contacts for larger firms.
TLT case study
How Cirrom is Transforming TLT’s Data Quality and Providing Important CRM Insight
“Running Cirrom across our entire CRM gives me confidence that our data is accurate and up-to-date”
Top 40 UK law firm, TLT LLP, selected Cirrom to support their ongoing commitment to improving data quality and data compliance.
After integrating with LexisNexis® InterAction®, Cirrom provided a full report and health score on the quality of the data within TLT’s CRM. In order to automatically fix existing data and as well as new data entered, a series of automated rules were agreed on an implemented.
Lisa Price, Head of Marketing at TLT “Cirrom’s health score gives us an accurate picture of the size and type of data issues. Not only that, it suggests which changes are needed to improve that score, and then enables you to make those changes. Running Cirrom across our entire CRM gives me confidence that our data is accurate and up-to-date, empowering our CRM Manager to focus on more strategic work.
Onboarding was rapid. We’ve been supported at every stage, and the whole process has been simple and painless.”
Kealey Town, CRM Manager at TLT “It was really exciting to run through Cirrom’s initial report and see examples of the changes suggested. Using Cirrom’s technology will drastically decrease the time it takes to identify and fix contact data problems. Cirrom really is leading the way in providing busy CRM Managers like myself the data tools I need to be much (much!) more efficient.”
Related posts
About Vuture
The story of how David Brady founded the Vuture marketing agency and developed the digital marketing system in 2006 and then went on to sell it to in 2019 is covered here:
The Sale of Vuture: Finding a Strategic Partner to Grow Our Company (vistapointadvisors.com)
relationship management automation in professional services firms (kimtasso.com) April 2018
Marketing technology – Vuture (kimtasso.com) November 2012
Marketing communications technology for professional firms (kimtasso.com) July 2009
Related Martech articles and systems
Book review: Build your digital marketing strategy by Steve Brennan (kimtasso.com) July 2022
(XR) and Virtual Reality (VR) could transform online events (kimtasso.com) November 2020
The growth of MarTech in professional services – an overview (kimtasso.com) March 2020
Intapp leads the way with client lifecycle management (CLM) solution (kimtasso.com) July 2019
Intapp integrates technology and information (kimtasso.com) March 2018
Book review: “Understanding digital marketing” Damian Ryan (kimtasso.com) November 2015
Pitch development system (kimtasso.com) August 2015 Iphelion
Legal marketing case studies – Farrer and Berwin Leighton Paisner (kimtasso.com) October 2014 InterAction
Marketing Technology – To automate or not to automate legal pitches? (kimtasso.com) July 2014 Enable’s PitchPerfect
Integrated marketing systems (Web, CRM, ERM etc) – Hubbard One – Kim Tasso October 2011
Hubspot webinar – Science of lead generation (On-line contact forms) – Kim Tasso August 2011
