Every click, swipe, and search leaves a trail of digital breadcrumbs. But, not all of it points toward actual buying intent. In the midst of an abundance of data, there’s a real challenge in quickly and confidently separating high-value prospects from those who are just browsing.

Even the most sophisticated tech stacks and campaigns are only as good as the data behind them. That’s why maintaining clean, current data shouldn’t been seen a chore, but a strategic marketing priority.

At its core, good data hygiene is about correcting inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and redundancies. It doesn’t sound glamorous, but the outcomes certainly are—think better campaign effectiveness and more trust with customers. Working with clean data gives greater confidence when making decisions, and ultimately lays the foundation to take on more advanced initiatives like predictive analytics, and real-time personalization.

High-performing campaigns depend on high-quality data. These five data cleansing best practices should be part of every marketer’s strategy.

1. Audit First

Before jumping into fixes, it pays to start with a comprehensive audit of your current data. That means assessing:

• Diversity. Are you collecting data from a variety of different sources?
• Completeness. Are critical fields populated and consistently formatted?
• Error patterns. Are there common issues like duplicate records, outdated contact info, or non-standard naming conventions?

Taking diagnostic steps first will reveal where the biggest and most serious gaps are. It also helps marketers prioritize the most critical needs. Like, for example, focusing on the data that is most important for upcoming sales efforts, or honing in on the most high-value customer segments or accounts. 

2. Standardize 

One of the most overlooked aspects of data quality is simple standardization. Even small inconsistencies—like “Inc.” vs. “Incorporated” or inconsistent date formats—can become obstacles when trying to segment data or use it for personalization. Standardization means:

• Applying consistent naming conventions.
• Normalizing formats for dates, addresses, phone numbers.
• Harmonizing geographic or firmographic data for easier filtering

There are tools to help with this, but marketers can play an important role in helping the business define the rules, so everyone throughout the organization can extract the most value from the data. This builds a more scalable data infrastructure that supports long-term growth and better resulting analytics.

3. De-Duplicate 

Duplicate records are more than an annoyance. They actually increase campaign costs and skew the performance metrics. Even worse, you increase the chances of irritating customers with redundant messages. That said, there’s more nuance to the solution than simply deleting duplicates.

A better practice is to merge duplicate profiles rather than deleting them, to preserve valuable historical data and behavioral insights. This typically involves:

• Defining what constitutes a duplicate. Is it an exact-match email? Or name and phone number?
• Decide which record in a duplicate group will be the "master." This record will serve as the primary source of truth, and data from other duplicate records can be merged into it. 
• Determine how conflicting data from duplicate records will be handled during the merge, such as: will you keep the most recent data, or the longest data? Will you prioritize data from a specific source? 

Maintaining a consolidated view of each customer is the foundation for effective personalization and omnichannel marketing.

4. Enrich Strategically

Data enrichment—the process of adding third-party data to your records—can be very powerful when applied strategically. You should always cleanse data before you enrich to ensure your investment isn’t wasted. 

Data enrichment is a vital strategy to:

• Fill in important missing fields.
• Build a more comprehensive understanding of each customer.
• Update stale records based on more current activity.
• Improve segmentation accuracy by layering in deeper behavioral or psychographic intelligence.
• Strengthen personalization and targeting with more data about individual needs and preferences.

Data enrichment elevates basic data into actionable insights, driving more effective and efficient marketing strategies.

5. Keep Cleansing!

Treating data cleansing as a one-off project is a classic mistake. In reality, data quality degrades continuously. Annual clean-ups may not be enough to keep your data fresh and accurate. 

A better approach bakes data hygiene into ongoing processes. This looks like: 

• Standardization and verification at the point of data entry.
• Regular cleanses to remove or update stale records
• Refresh cycles that enrich your database with additional, current third-party data.

When data cleansing becomes an operational habit marketers remain prepared to act with confidence and speed whenever opportunity strikes.

Clean Data = Confident Marketing

We frequently work with organizations that are facing high growth, shifting customer expectations, and increasing pressure to prove impact. In these situations, high data quality isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s essential. 

Good, clean data helps every marketing dollar work harder. It’s not just about fixing bad inputs, it’s about giving marketers the confidence to execute bigger, smarter strategies. Clean data doesn’t just power better marketing, it empowers better marketers! 

What if your data was always clean and current, without having to think about it? If that sounds appealing, you might consider B2E’s MotusBase DataTuneUP for ongoing support without the effort. Reach out to learn more!

B2E has again completed its annual SOC 2 audit, receiving a clean opinion with no exceptions. This achievement, which B2E has maintained for more than six years, is more than certification. It’s an independent validation that B2E’s systems, processes, and controls meet rigorous standards for data security. It was conducted by third-party firm using the SOC 2’s strict criteria for data policies and practices.

Attention spans are short and personalization expectations are high. Traditional demographic information like age, income, and ZIP code no longer paint a complete picture of today’s consumer. Instead, modern marketers are leaning into to psychographics, which provide deeper insights into consumer values, lifestyles, and attitudes, to build more precise targeting, messaging, and engagement strategies.

Are you still relying on outdated models when it comes to communicating with your customers? Static demographics, generic messaging, and one-size-fits-all contact lists simply don’t reflect the complexity or dynamic nature of today’s consumers. 

Are you still marketing to your customers based on age, gender, or their last purchase? We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this approach may be putting you behind. 

B2E Data Marketing took home three recognitions at the 2025 American Marketing Association (AMA) Iowa Chapter’s annual NOVA Awards, receiving a perfect score in the Integrated Marketing Campaign category. All three judges awarded B2E a perfect score of 10 for its work for a Midwest health insurance company – something AMA Iowa said is a first! 

One of the reasons your website is such a valuable digital asset is its ability to constantly attract potential customers and partners. The issue for most is that a whopping 98% of website visitors come and go anonymously, without filling out a lead capture form or otherwise identifying themselves. 

Inboxes are full, and attention spans are shrinking. Is your customer email going to break through the noise? 

Technology is always marching forward, and once again, a new leap is advancing consumer insights. Marketers are increasingly able to tie together fragmented data customer points across the digital footprint and execute highly targeted campaigns–and, without compromising privacy.

It’s called identity graphing and it’s a powerful tool for connecting the dots between all the different buckets of consumer data. To get a better sense of how it provides marketers with an integrated view of consumers’ digital identities, let’s look at some of its most impactful and practical applications. 

Why Identity Graphing Matters in Marketing

Today’s consumer interacts with brands through numerous touchpoints, both online and offline. They leave digital footprints across devices and channels, making it difficult for marketers to see the big picture of their interactions. Getting a unified view and making strategic choices comes down to the ability to create a cohesive picture from scattered identifiers like IP addresses, cookies, and device IDs.

B2E’s identity graph solution, MotusAudiences Connect, is powered by the comprehensive Experian database. It offers businesses access to information with incredible reach and scale, to the tune of more than 2.75 billion IDs across 250 million individuals and 126 million households. 

MotusAudiences Connect bridges the gaps marketers previously faced by “resolving” digital identities into a single picture, allowing brands to:

• Enhance targeting precision by crafting personalized campaigns that align with audience behaviors and preferences.
• Improve campaign efficiency by ensuring that marketing messages reach the right individuals, reducing wasted ad spend caused by broad, ineffective targeting.
• Strengthen measurement and attribution by tracking engagement more effectively, attributing conversions to the right campaigns. This helps marketers refine their strategies for even better future outcomes.

Balancing Personalization and Privacy

The data privacy landscape is growing more complicated for marketers who must balance consumers’ often contradictory feelings about data privacy and personalization—along with an evolving set of laws that can vary from state to state. To navigate identity graphing responsibly, a privacy-first approach incorporates several key practices. 

• Using hashed identifiers: Converting personally identifiable information (PII) into anonymized formats helps preserve both security and privacy while still enabling precise targeting.
• Complying with data protection frameworks: Adhering to frameworks such as SOC 2 standards and the California Consumer Protection Act helps maintain industry standard data practices and compliance. 
• Using trust-based principles. It’s important to use an identity graph partner that takes extensive measures to protect the confidentiality and security of consumer data. They should adhere to a values-based approach to data processing that upholds transparency, user consent, and the protection of personally identifiable information.

Using Identity Graphing in Marketing Strategies

It’s growing more difficult for marketers to track and understand customer behavior without an identity resolution strategy. There are so many dots to connect across consumer interactions such as email, social media, mobile apps, in-store visits, and connected devices—and consumers today expect brands to have a sophisticated picture of their behaviors and expectations.

With a more accurate and dynamic view of an audience, marketers can leverage it in a number of impactful ways: 

• Segmentation and customization. Create audience segments based on demographic and behavioral attributes and design more relevant messaging.
• Precise audience expansion. Enrich customer data sets with new IDs for increased reach and scale, while still targeting the appropriate audience members with precision.
• Omnichannel campaigns: Deliver a more seamless experience across email, social media, and digital advertising, improving both engagement and brand consistency.
• Data-driven decisions. Identity-linked campaigns provide more actionable insights enabling marketers to map the customer journey and gain a clearer understanding of what drives conversions.

Use Case: Marketing Agency Serving Multi-Location Companies

To help further illustrate the potential for identity graphing, let’s look at the example of a marketing agency with a heating and cooling business client with business locations across multiple states. The agency’s challenge is to deliver hyper-targeted digital ads for each business location, ensuring the ads reach local homeowners who are most likely to need home services. So, how can they laser target the appropriate targets in every market?

Anonymized customer data from the heating and cooling company can be run through MotusAudiences Connect to be augmented with additional details such as demographic profile, income level, and purchase habits and preferences. This builds a more complete and accurate picture of the home services company’s ideal customer segments.

This information can then be used to create location-specific “lookalike audiences,” to ensure ads target homeowners who fit the ideal profiles. For example, for target customers in older neighborhoods, ads may focus on urgent repair services. Middle-income areas and certain demographics might receive messages about affordable maintenance plans and seasonal promotions. Ads directed at target audiences with more disposable income might emphasize premium service offerings and energy-efficient upgrades.

Embracing Identity Graphing Techniques

The digital landscape is always expanding, but it still remains a largely disjointed arena. Identity graphing offers a way for businesses to synthesize all the different data points and stay more closely in tune with customers. It provides a major competitive advantage to any businesses interested in staying a step ahead. 

With an assist from identity graphing, it’s more obvious how to anticipate customer needs, deliver the right message at the perfect moment, and maximize the impact of every campaign. Could you do more with identity-driven insights? For more detailed information about B2E’s identity graphing solution MotusAudiences Connect, schedule a meeting with us!