Database Health Check

A database decays quietly. Nobody deletes a contact; people just change jobs, change numbers, and stop opening. A year later the list still looks the same size and works half as well. This is the annual audit — twelve checks, roughly two hours if you do all of them.

Before you start

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• Export a full backup first. Every check below is reversible if you have the file; several are not if you do not.
• Work in one sitting per check rather than one sitting for all twelve. Partial passes are where inconsistency creeps in.
• Write down the count before and after each check. Next year those numbers tell you whether the habit is working.

The twelve checks

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Tick each check your database already passes. The unticked ones are your list. Work through all twelve before reading the score — a half-finished audit reads worse than the database deserves.

• 01 Duplicate records Start here

  Search by email, then by phone, then by last name plus street. Most CRMs only dedupe on email, which misses the same person entered twice with a work and a personal address. Merge rather than delete so you keep the history.

• 02 Contacts with no source

  If you cannot tell where someone came from, you cannot tell what is working. Tag every record with its true first touch. For anything genuinely unknown, use one consistent tag — not a blank.

• 03 Missing phone numbers

  Count them. A contact you can only email is worth roughly half a contact you can call. If the number is above 30 percent of your list, that is the gap to close before you spend on new leads.

• 04 Dead email addresses Start here

  Pull your last few campaign reports and list every hard bounce. Those addresses will never work again. Leaving them in inflates your count, drags your deliverability, and on a per-contact plan you are paying for them.

• 05 Tags that mean nothing

  Read your whole tag list out loud. Anything you cannot define in one sentence gets merged or deleted. Dated tags from old campaigns are the usual offenders — they pile up and nobody ever filters by them again.

• 06 Contacts with no name

  A first name is the minimum for any personalised send. Fill what you can from email addresses and past transactions; flag the rest so they get a generic greeting rather than a blank one.

• 07 Past clients not marked as past clients

  This is the single most valuable segment you own and it is usually not a segment at all. Tag every closed transaction with the year. Everything in the next check depends on it.

• 08 Anniversary and birthday data

  Optional, but it is the cheapest reason to make contact you will ever have. Add close dates at minimum — you already have them in your files.

• 09 Anyone untouched in 18 months Start here

  Filter by last activity. These people have not heard from you in a year and a half and no longer think of you as their agent. Decide deliberately: re-engage, or archive. Doing neither is the expensive option.

• 10 People who unsubscribed but are still being called

  Check that your email opt-outs are reflected wherever your calling list lives. Contacting someone who asked you to stop is a compliance problem, not just a rude one.

• 11 Duplicated households

  Two people, one address, one transaction. Link them rather than mailing the same household twice — it looks careless and it costs twice.

• 12 The list you forgot about

  The spreadsheet on your desktop. The old CRM you migrated from. The open house sign-in sheets. Somewhere there is a list that never made it in. Find it now, clean it once, and import it properly.

What your result means

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Download the printable guide

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