Tips for Data Cleansing?

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

I'm a new Marketo user and I'm thinking about setting up Smart Lists for data cleansing. I'm convinced many of you have done this before...has anyone compiled list of steps on how to do this so I can delegate it? It seems like a fairly easy thing to do with repeatable steps (ie: state data field cleanups - look for these common variations of Arkansas to add to the smart list...for example: ARK, AR, Arkansas, Ark., etc).

Also, can Smart Lists look for misspellings? It seems from the tutorials that they can only look for additional information that's added onto your existing search item:

ie: USA pulls up USAA as an option but not U.S.A

[Anonymous]

Using smart lists for country and then for state is one way to go about data cleansing.  I use a tool call DemandTools by CRMFusion http://www.crmfusion.com/demandtools/ for data cleansing as well as mass updating of lead owner, lead source, etc.  It's super handy and very powerful.  If you are going down the road of data cleansing, I also recommend making sure your input sources are locked down, meaning that the forms on the site or sales rep don't start adding in bad data after you put in the hard work to clean it up. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I also use smart lists all the time for this kind of clean up.

You would set up the smart list so that  when you have country =, you put a list of all the possibilities you know of/have seen/the system can find. Then in the flow step, have it change to how you would like it to read.