In 2008, our first student came to us from Seneca College in the Marketing Administration Co-op Program. Most of our students are related to our staff and some students use their earnings to pay for their schooling. Upon graduation, the skills that these students learn at Vox ISM, look impressive to their future employers. This summer, we have hired three students to help us in the marketing department to do database maintenance.

What is Database Maintenance?

Database Maintenance is a term we use to describe a set of tasks that both the sales and marketing team perform with the intention to improve their database integrity.

The Value of Database Maintenance

Over time, the database will go through numerous changes. Staff will routinely add data or remove data from CRM records to help increase performance. A database that is accurate will allow the marketing and sales team to reach out faster to their quality leads. It takes time to perform database maintenance – a student can focus on these tasks which lets the rest of the team have more time to call their leads, work on marketing materials, or prepare a quote.

What Can Students do for Database Maintenance?

Each student at Vox ISM contributes at least 10 hours per week and are assigned to help our full-time marketing team. What the students like best about working for Vox ISM, is that they have flexible hours. How? From their home or dorm, they have the ability to log into Microsoft Dynamics CRM remotely using a web browser. This flexibility is especially appreciated when the students are in school and need the day hours to get to their classes and work on their assignments. They can work in the evenings or on weekends. If they want to work on the CRM using the midnight oil, they can. And some of our student owls do.

Top Student Jobs/Assignments

  1. Constant Contact unsubscribes: Even though we hate to lose any subscriber to our newsletter, it does happen. Constant Contact will give us a weekly list of all unsubscribes. Our student will take this list and update CASL including selecting ‘do not allow’ bulk emails. This results in having our CRM database matching our Constant Contact database and vice versa.
  2. Constant Contact blocks: From Constant Contact, we can get a list of all emails that were not delivered. Sometimes the person leaves the organization, or their email is incorrect, or they block us using their Outlook. Our student will take this list and update our CRM database. The student then updates CASL to ‘do not allow’ and makes a note informing us why our newsletter was not received appropriately: bounced or undeliverable. This allows the marketing team the knowledge that they need to ask for the new email next time they reach out to this contact. During this assignment, the student will search for the contact’s LinkedIn page to see if he can determine if the email is incorrect or if the contact has left the organization. For those that left the organization, the student will deactivate the contact in our CRM and then populate a new contact record under their new company.
  3. Add lists to CRM: When Vox ISM receives a list of companies that are looking for ERP or CRM software, the students will cross-check and try to find the existing account in the CRM accounts and match it to the lead on the acquired list. Obviously some accounts will be new and the student will qualify the lead moving it over to the accounts. Once all leads are cross-checked, we will create phone call activities for the students to work as a team to hunt down these companies in the search engines. They will verify the street address from the website, add contacts, emails and social media that they find from their search.

In summary, if your Dynamics CRM database is corrupt and full of errors, may I suggest you hire a student. Remember, today’s students are tomorrow’s future. Over time, your database will become better; and, in the meantime, the student is learning many skills in which to put on his or her resume upon graduation.

 

-Linda Heaton

Marketing Lead generation Manager at Vox ISM, Inc.