A new year is upon us once again. What are your resolutions for 2017? Hit the gym more often? Get organized? Improve the state of your bank account?

Guess what: your data has a very similar set of resolutions. And automating the quality of your contact data and marketing leads is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to reach them because the accuracy of this data has a ripple effect in so many of the areas that will make you successful in 2017.

Let’s look at a few of them:

Saving Money

The economic argument for automating your data quality is extremely well-established nowadays. A relatively small expenditure lets you tap into continually updated databases of addresses, phone numbers, emails and more, to validate and correct contact information before you use it. This not only saves you the costs of manually cleaning up your contact records, but reduces the manpower and time that bad data costs your business.

Meeting Budget Goals

There is much more to your financial picture than cost savings. Your top line revenue is often directly proportional to the quality of your marketing leads. Automated lead validation systems take the work out of optimizing the value of this asset, analyzing over 100 data points including name, address, phone, email, device verification and more to provide a quantitative rating of lead quality. The result? Targeted marketing to your highest quality leads, and a much better ROI on your marketing budget.

Gaining a Competitive Edge

When is contact data more than just contact data? When you can leverage it to append demographic information, phone contacts, or other enhanced lead data. Automated systems can help you turn the data you have into the competitive intelligence you need.

Improving Customer Service

Good service starts with responding to the right people at the right time – and many of your worst service failures start with incorrect or misdirected contact information, ranging from lack of response to lost shipments. And since we now live in a social media world where our service missteps are exposed to the public, the ripple effect of these service failures can quickly spread far and wide.

Other Benefits

Did you know that automated contact validation systems can be your front line partner in a host of other critical business objectives, including fraud control, phone contact and address standards compliance, or sales tax computation? When you harness the power of a third-party vendor’s databases and assessment criteria, you make it possible to leverage many tasks that have an influence on your bottom line.

The New Year is a perfect time to reassess how hard your data is working for you – and more important, how you can painlessly improve these data assets to make your life easier and more profitable. And unlike most people’s personal resolutions, there is no need for them to fall by the wayside if you choose the right partner. By strategically exploring what possibilities you have for your own data, you can take a very big step towards making 2017 your best year yet.