I received some really great feedback from last week’s post on Email Automation Gone Wrong, encouraging me to dive deeper into each of the recommended steps to ensure you don’t fall victim to some of the examples I shared.

In response, I’ll spend the next week or so diving into each element of my 4-part system, giving you a firm understanding of how to build your own system and avoid sending automated emails with bad news written all over them.

Today, we’ll start with Data Dictionaries.

I’ll admit, I really skimmed the surface with my initial post on this part of the system. What is a data dictionary, why is it important to your business, and how can you start and maintain one for your own business? Let’s do this, baby!

What is a data dictionary, and why should I care?

A Data Dictionary can be super simple (like the template I shared in my resource bundle), or incredibly complex (like, Wikipedia definition-style… eek!), depending on your business, how far along you are with automation, and what kinds of systems you currently use to capture incoming prospects and customers.  For our purposes in marketing automation, a Data Dictionary is a guiding document that lists the sources of data capture and the fields of customer information you are gathering, along with their definitions, in order to standardize data in integrated systems.

You want to map data from one system to another? Terrific! Data Dictionaries ensure you don’t accidentally populate a data field incorrectly, thus sending automated or personalized marketing campaigns that end up on blog posts entitled “Email Automation Gone Wrong”. It also ensures you don’t end up with duplicate data fields. I have worked with businesses who capture DOB in one place, Date of Birth in another, and Birthday in a third… thus having up to three data points potentially associated with one contact adding up to zero confidence that any of them is correct. By keeping a summary document of where you capture data, what that data is called, and consolidating storage/mapping appropriately, you will enjoy fewer data-caused headaches and more data-caused revenue. Hooray!

Are you building multiple landing pages to capture new leads? Make sure that the source data feeds into consolidated fields. Are you storing data in multiple locations? TAKE HEED! Do your best to have one source of truth for your customer data, and if you absolutely must have customer information stored in more than one location, create a system for regularly merging that information as best you can.

Regularly reviewing and updating your Data Dictionary will really help with this. As a new source of data is added, you can review the fields where the data maps to and ensure that you aren’t duplicating. This also gives you a signal to assess your overall data strategy to identify under-utilized data points, opportunities for automation programs, new ways to segment and speak to your audience, and more. Who knew dictionaries could be so damn sexy, right?

What kind of data should I be keeping track of?

Oh man. This is a doozy of a question, but I’ll do my best to answer comprehensively without getting too deep into the weeds on GDPR, B2B vs. B2C, industry specifics, etc.

At the minimum, you need to be capturing email address and name. If you’re in the business of selling and shipping product, you start to get some geographical information like billing and shipping address. As you get further down the line of basic contact details, phone number is handy in case you ever have issues with reaching a particular email address but want the chance to stay in touch. But that’s like, essentials.

To go next-level, you could consider requesting additional information through a subscriber preference center and/or profile. A preference center could be leveraged to capture the kinds of information your subscribers are interested in, or a profile might encourage the customer to share their date of birth with you (in exchange for a surprise on their birthday, of course) and plug in additional information about how they shop or how often they would like to hear from you.

A word of caution: implementing preference centers is a wonderful way to keep a customer engaged and simultaneously enhance your marketing efforts, but you’ll want to be absolutely sure that your marketing systems are configured to honor the preferences that your customer shares with you. Don’t bother asking a customer how often they’d like to hear from you if you’re not going to respect that request by having a system in place to monitor cadence! Don’t ask your customer to opt in to newsletter or event info, if you’re just going to send them everything you’ve got going on, regardless of their stated preference. Ya follow? I feel a future post on preference centers comin’ on…

If you are selling products online or at a physical location, you likely have a POS system in place that stores customer purchase information. Whenever possible, associating a purchase with a person will give you the ability to become far more advanced in your marketing down the road, and gives you the chance to invite that customer back for experiences and products that will delight them!

Let me say it again:

If you sell anything at a physical location and don’t invite that customer to stay in touch via email, you are missing out on big-time future revenue.

I STRONGLY encourage the storage of purchase information, including what products are purchased, average order value, date of purchase, quantity of purchase items, etc. Knowing if a purchase took place at a physical location, pop-up shop, or online also gives you valuable info that opens the door to re-marketing opportunities in the future. If you have a collection of purchasers who purchased from your pop-up shop, you can invite them to your next “pop-up” event. If you keep track of when purchases are made, you can create replenishment programs for consumable products, or invite a customer back with a “miss you” email campaign after a certain period of time. If you have a loyalty program of some sort, you can target customers with average order values above a certain threshold who might qualify for benefits through your rewards program, and invite them to be a part of it.

Want to learn how to create a triggered message?

My free email course, “Email Essentials 101,” delivers this knowledge bomb and more, direct to your inbox. Sign up through the side-bar on my blog –> and start mastering the essentials today!

How do I start?

I’m going to hit you with some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that if you are just getting started, this can be a really simple process. The template I provide in this resource bundle is a great starting point and starts you in the right general direction. Sit down and think of all the possible locations where you might be capturing data (website forms, physical location, fishbowl at an event…) and simply take an inventory of the pieces of info you’re requesting. You might not even have marketing automation programs in place yet, so that’s a whole column you don’t need to muss and fuss with (yet). Easy peasy.

Bad news time: if you are already a fairly established business with regular outbound marketing happening and you DON’T have a Data Dictionary already, this might take you more than a minute to compile. There are more moving parts to consider, because you’ve been out there pounding pavement for longer and in more locations. No worries, though. The same basic principles apply, although the template I provide in my resource bundle would probably be too rudimentary for your purposes. I recommend going spreadsheet on this project if you have more than 2-3 integrated systems, just to help with a more horizontal visualization and keep all the little ducks in their own special row. Block out 3-4 hours to take stock of your data sources and storage locations, inventory what data you are capturing, and if you start to identify any duplication or red flags, simply highlight them and move on. Come back to problem solving with a clear head on another day, and go about the business of de-duping data fields, updating any systems appropriately, and communicating with your team about any changes in your process for capturing or storing information.

How often should I update?

Oh I’m so very glad that you asked.

Obviously, any time you add a data source (lead capture page, customer survey, new system or software for doing business), you should add it to your data dictionary as a part of your ongoing process. I also strongly recommend quarterly review of all marketing programming, including your data dictionary, to make sure you are being intentional and going on the offensive to drive results, rather than being forced into reactive mode because you weren’t giving these things the attention that they deserve.

“Okay, Erica. It seems like you just gave me a huge list of things to do. Not cool, dude.”

I know that this seems like a pretty big undertaking. But I promise you: a few hours invested in this NOW will save you hours of headache later. If the fear of landing on a “Marketing Automation Gone Wrong” roundup blog post doesn’t motivate you, then let’s focus on the upside:

The time you invest in this now will help you unlock the revenue-driving potential of your data further than you can even imagine.

I know Biggy said “Mo’ money, mo’ problems” – but why don’t you start making more money (passively) and get back to me on whether or not your problems increased as a side-effect.

Okay, so now that I’ve gone deeper on Data Dictionaries, I want to know: What have I missed? Where do you still have questions? Are you sold on Data Dictionaries, or do you have another solution that is worth sharing and exploring here? Tell me in the comments!

Also, tune in next week for the 2nd installment in this four-part series, where we’ll dive further into how to inventory, maintain, and optimize your email automation programs.