Resonata Consulting Update and Why Cleansing your data is important.

It’s been a busy time for us lately, especially with the launch of the new website, new client briefs, existing clients coming back to us, networking and lots of client meetings but unfortunately that has meant that we have neglected the blog for a while – our aim is to update the blog once a week!

This week I wanted to talk about and touch upon data cleansing as in a recession it is perhaps even more important to keep your data up to date. After-all many of us are trying to cut costs wherever we can but we also know when to make the right investments in order to continue to speak to our current clients and on the flipside of that acquire meaningful and deeply researched data that will enable you to be speaking to the right companies for the products and/or services that you deliver.

Over time, companies collect a significant amount of existing client and new client data. They can have entire databases of lapsed, current and potential client data but it is not necessarily all accurate and actionable data.

Data cleansing is something that should be done at least twice a year (business data often decays at the rate of 40% plus per year). If you want to make the most of your existing client data so you can keep running effective campaigns, it could be time to take a second look at your existing database.

Removing incorrect details can save you time and money when prospecting potential clients, speaking to existing clients or speaking to lapsed clients.

If client data is entered incorrectly, it can cause data headaches at a later date. If that same piece of data is entered differently more than once then the two opposing records can result in an inefficient process, confused and untrusting potential clients and confused sales staff.

If you store data such as physical addresses, phone numbers or email addresses you need to make sure that the rate of duplication kept to an absolute minimum – hence my recommendation to cleanse your data at least twice a year –more if it is in consistent use. Precise data is essential business incorrect data can very easily impede on your otherwise successful sales and marketing campaigns.

So is this the sort of exercise you would like to do in-house?

Outsourcing the cleansing of your data is a much more efficient, easy and less costly exercise and you can get your be sales and marketing data in great shape without the headaches of doing it in-house.

Employ a professional organisation to give you a full data audit and you’ll be left with valid, de-duplicated data on prospects that are ready to be engaged.

The data cleansing exercise will systematically go through your data and ensure that the records your teams use remain accurate. At the same time, you can unleash a two-pronged attack on your data, cleansing it one on hand and using that data to provide new sales and marketing leads for your staff to close on the other.

So, if the reason why so many sales and marketing campaigns receive low hit rates is just incorrect data, then data cleansing is a way to invest in your company. People move companies, change jobs, transfer extensions and within a year, up to 40% of your database is out of date and incorrect.

So without putting too much of a frightener on you and just by explaining that data cleansing is an investment, some of our clients are coming around to this and at the same time buying highly researched, accurate and hard to get data from us which we know is pre-cleansed!

Resonata.co.uk launches!

Resonata.co.uk launches!

We have now launched our new website and we are very proud of it!

We have gone through a variety of processes such as design, logos, branding, technical development, tweaks, changes, re-designs and generally getting our website absolutely spot on for the business that we are!

This is our first website design and we feel that it reflects our brand, our values and our ethos very well. Our brand is all about being bespoke to client’s needs, going the extra mile, looking for great prospect opportunities and data solutions for our clients.

Resonata Consulting’s website was built by Byte Art in conjunction with huge input from Resonata Consulting. Byte Art www.byteart.com are an award-winning web design and development agency located in London, Bristol, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man and Dubai. We worked with their Farringdon based office and we would like to extend our particular thanks to Andrea Tamborini who has been pro-active, diligent, patient, understanding, extremely helpful and has produced great designs for us!

Resonata Consulting would also like to thank our SEO Copywriter Oliver Lewis www.seo-copywriter.co.uk for the great work he did in conjunction with us on the SEO Copywriting. He is diligent, focussed and has got a keen writing style!

Resonata Consulting would also like to pay homage to our branding consultant and all round branding Guru Yvonne Fuchs www.thebrandingworkshop.com . Yvonne has been an excellent sounding board for us and has helped us immensely with our branding (both internally and externally). Yvonne is an inspiration to all!

Resonata Consulting would also like to thank Dr. Alan Rae www.howtodobusiness.com our business mentor who has helped guide us from initial late night conversations in the pub to where we are now. Alan is incredibly knowledgeable, hugely bright and is a great motivator who offers us a fantastic and pro-active advice whenever there is a need.

We would also like to thank Business Link London, The Thames Innovation Centre, Charles Dawson, Lena Robinson at Neue Media, Simon Daniels at Percassity, Peter and Kathy Baker, Ruud and Jose Vermeulen, Sara Bizanti and Dawn Canonigo.

The naming of Resonata Consulting.

Many people have asked us about the name so please feel free to find out more here!

How did we get to the name?

We had a number of initial conversations surrounding MI or IM (using first name initials) but we quickly realised this would not necessarily help us build a brand and we wanted a name that would:

a) stand out

b) be memorable

c) incorporate data

d) have an international feel

e) use consulting or consultancy

a) Standing out and b) being memorable

Resonata stands out from the crowd because although it has a familiar feel to it (resonate or resonating) it also incorporates data and when you see that resonate is brought together with data it immediately gives you a connection of resonating with data, therefore it stands out, speaks softly yet firmly and ultimately is memorable to others.

c) incorporating data

Many branding experts, consultants and our advisers have consistently told us that our brand/company name must incorporate the term data – because that is what we are all about. We struggled at first to incorporate it but by being able to have the word within the name allows our audience to automatically connect with it.

d) have an international feel

Because both directors have travelled extensively (Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, Central America, and South America), speak a number of different languages (English, Dutch, Spanish, French and German) and have both lived and worked abroad in various parts of the world (Germany, Mexico, France,Spain, Holland, Malaysia, Switzerland and the UK). We felt that our company name/brand needed to reflect our international experience and by using a name that sounds Spanish in nature. Because the word resonata was created by us it has an individual feel and it is a word that should have no cultural barriers.

e) Use consulting or consultancy

Resonata Consulting had to have consulting or consultancy within the company name because we consult with clients rather than tell clients what to do or listen to clients and then do the opposite.

We wanted to our company name to reflect the values of our company: “Building on existing knowledge and processes but more importantly resonating as in being in agreement with and listening to client needs rather than simply giving them what we think they want or what is easily available”

Resonata also comes from

RESearch ON dATA

Which specifies what we do.

The consulting was added to give a consultancy feel to the business and naming it as a business rather than simply a scientific or vocal concept.

Resonating Data ie Resonating clients data needs

What does it mean to us

Resonating clients needs, if we were in the situation ourselves this is how we would want to be treated not as another faceless client. So the name means that we do what clients want, not what we think they want, hence resonating client needs and consulting on those.

The Importance of Client Focus for Resonata Consulting.

We were recently speaking with a potential client, discussing our client focused values and how our client focus strategy came about and we were thinking it would be a valuable experience to share it with you.

Prior to starting up Resonata Consulting, both directors worked at high profile publishers such as United Business Media, Reed Elsevier and the Financial Times Group. These are well established companies with great reputations in their respective fields and with a sizeable support team in place to meet customer demands. However, over time we have witnessed a shift from client focus to product focus embodied by the principle of meeting “customer demands” rather than “customer needs”.

For example, a longstanding client from one of the companies comes to mind. As the company offered a relatively unique service, the client remained loyal for many years until at one point he lost patience with the ongoing internal changes and his failure in finding the right answers to his queries. He got caught in the corporate cycle, where he was represented by several Account Managers in a very short period of time; none of them seemed particularly determined to focus on his client needs.

Speaking with him at length, I learned more about his organization, how and when the product was used and what he really wanted to achieve with the product promising to deliver on his needs. Having said that, I then had to go on a personal quest to find the answers and I had to make my case with several departments across different offices, using different systems before being able to come back to the client and offer any assistance.

As the example highlights, sometimes even a respected company with a superior product simply gets lost in a maze of departments and processes, and the external services – the real service to the client suffers as a consequence.

Resonata Consulting was set up with the principle of being client focused because our experience within large corporates molded us to stand out from the rest, and build Resonata Consulting around the experiences our clients want to have. We adjust to the needs of our clients rather than assume our products will do the work for us. Being a nimble organization with no layers to speak of is a great starting point. At the same time we can turn to external knowledge and expertise which helps our company remain at the forefront of data acquisition consultancy (or list brokering).

Clear communication should be a key value in any professional environment, and understanding client needs will help your organization during these stringent times. Dedicated processes remain essential to guarantee continuity; for example, Resonata Consulting will not commence a project until a briefing document has been completed, discussed and agreed upon. The more questions we ask the better the brief will be, and this will enable us to be even more client focused and give us the tools to deliver above an beyond expectations.

There are many established organizations out there that talk the talk, but do they walk the walk? Resonata Consulting delivers unbiased, timely and quality delivery of hard to find data/lists but we first and foremost dedicate our efforts to understanding the client needs.

Please feel free to get in touch with either Matthew Baker matthew.baker@resonata.co.uk or Ivo Vermeulen – ivo.vermeulen@resonata.co.uk should you have any comments or you would like to speak to us concerning acquiring data on your behalf.

Why Use a List Broker or Data Acquisition Consultancy?

A list brokerage is a company that provides marketing lists. Usually one or more of: mail, phone, fax and sometimes email lists.

However that is a fairly broad definition. Resonata actually prefers data acquisition consultancy not because it has a pretty ring to it but because it better reflects the way in which we operate.

List Brokers are supposed to be independent. However, some will have very close relationships with data suppliers that they might rely on more than others. There is nothing that can particularly be done about this because people buy people and over time these relationships will develop (hopefully not into your list broker just providing you data from one source!) Hence whyResonata has a different set of core values pertaining to be a data acquisition consultancy.

You could think of them IFA's; instead of walking into the nearest bank and signing up for a mortgage, loan or pension, you have an expert to advise you on who has the best deals, their advantages and disadvantages and who ultimately has the best services to suit your needs.

Many marketers and business owners choose to do the research themselves, Googling away for days, phoning and emailing endless companies thus far unknown to them and waiting for quotes. Anyone who has been through this experiences will have their own tale of how “rewarding” and worthwhile it is.

Because Resonata is a small yet fast moving business we have been doing the same thing. I recently purchased the marketing manager's yearbook for example. This has been useful but is the formatting right - no? Is the information necessarily all there? Is it something I can use straight away for email marketing? I would be interested in people's thoughts on this and how they have used it in the past.

The point is that having done this exercise ourselves it is becoming increasingly obvious to us that we are going to be using our very own services. We have recently come across a number of hard to reach marketing contacts and we may start using them ourselves. This could potentially act as an exercise in seeing how good the supplier really is and test-marketing it on behalf of our clients...

In most cases Resonata Consulting know where to go for any list, if indeed it’s available on the market at all. The interesting thing for Resonata is that when it is not available we approach the sorts of people who may have that information and ask them to consider working with us. A win win for all.

So if you are looking for a flexible and results focussed organisation to work with that knows its market and produces results and time-saving please send me an email with an outline of your requirements and we can speak further.