Disorganized marketing data is as good as no data at all

As marketers, we play in big pools of data every day. We're renting lists, sorting and filtering databases of leads, and going through mounds of statistics to look for trends. That's great -- when the data is accurate, filtered and tagged properly, and the way it should be.

But do we take for granted that our data is good? This can be very dangerous. If you're renting a list and the list vendor hasn't done a good job of verifying the data and organizing it properly, you could end up reaching a lot of people you didn't want to reach.

Here's a great example. The other day I read a press release by Jigsaw, a site that's a cross between a list broker and a social network. (In case you're not familiar with Jigsaw, you can essentially buy, sell, and trade business contact information. It's billed as a great resource for sales professionals who need a constant stream of accurate leads.) Jigsaw's press release announced that it will begin providing all its company data -- company names, addresses, industry, number of employees, etc. -- for free. The hook, of course, is that you still need to pay for contact info for particular people within those companies. You can also license this data for use in your own applications, on your own website, etc.

This caught my eye because the media property I work for, IndustryWeek, is always looking for new ways to provide useful and relevant information to our manufacturing executive audience. I thought a licensing deal with Jigsaw might be worth looking into, if we could help connect manufacturing decision-makers with information about companies they need to know.

So I started digging deeper. I went to Jigsaw's Open Data Initiative pages, to a list of pre-defined filters they've already developed for the data. I was pleased to see a category and several sub-categories for manufacturing, which is exactly what I was looking for. So I decided to check it out. I clicked on the "Aerospace & Defense" sub-category, and the first few company names looked appealing. These all look like companies that are in the aerospace or defense business.

But then I scrolled down the page. I started noticing something disturbing. There were a lot of listings for martial arts studios. Wait a second: martial arts studios aren't manufacturers! It took a few seconds before I figured out what was happening. Their filter must be finding the word "defense" in the listings for karate studios, which of course is getting matched up with "aerospace and defense."

I thought maybe I just picked a fluke category, and most of the data here is good. So I tried the next sub-industry filter in the list, "Automobiles, Boats and Motor Vehicles." Again, the first few seemed good. But then I started seeing listings for "Funday Eco-Tours" and "Go Fish Charters." Again, these companies might be associated with boats, but they have nothing to do with manufacturing.

I'm saying this not to fault Jigsaw. I've played around with their site in the past, and I found it to be pretty good. The business model makes sense, although I can't say anything for the accuracy of the information because I've never checked it out personally. My larger point is that when you're given a data source, you should always ask questions like:

• How was this data collected?
• How were the filters/groupings/categories applied? For example, for a magazine circulation form, I'd ask if individual respondents put themselves into an industry grouping, if the publisher added the grouping based on the name of the company, or if it was done some other way.
• How fresh is the data?
• Was there any human intervention in the data collection process? In other words, did an expert review responses for plausibility? If it's numerical data, was it scrubbed to remove outliers?
  

As the world becomes more dependent on databases, we hear an increasing number of horror stories about data gone wrong (the TSA's "Do Not Fly" list comes to mind, where some people have been mistakenly placed on the list and go through a huge ordeal every time they need to board a plane). Don't let your marketing program become a victim of bad or improperly used data.