CRM Data Cleanup Checklist

CRM Data Cleanup Checklist

Dirty CRM data compounds over time. What starts as a few duplicate records becomes a database full of bounced emails, wrong titles, and phantom accounts. This checklist walks you through a thorough cleanup.

Phase 1: Duplicate Removal

• Run duplicate detection on email addresses
• Run duplicate detection on company domains
• Merge duplicate contacts (keep the most complete record)
• Merge duplicate company records
• Check for near-duplicates (e.g., “IBM” vs “IBM Corp” vs “International Business Machines”)
• Set up automated duplicate prevention rules for future imports
• Document your merge strategy (which field values to keep)

Phase 2: Contact Data Validation

• Verify all email addresses (remove hard bounces)
• Validate phone numbers are in correct format
• Standardize job title formatting (e.g., “VP” vs “Vice President”)
• Confirm contacts still work at listed companies
• Remove contacts who have left their companies
• Update LinkedIn URLs that return 404 errors
• Flag contacts with no activity in 12+ months for review

Phase 3: Company Data Standardization

• Standardize company name formatting
• Fill missing industry classifications
• Update employee count ranges
• Verify website URLs are active
• Standardize address formatting
• Add missing company domains
• Classify companies by your ICP tiers

Phase 4: Field Hygiene

• Remove records with no email AND no phone (uncontactable)
• Standardize country and state abbreviations
• Fix inconsistent picklist values
• Remove test records and internal entries
• Clear outdated custom field values
• Ensure required fields are populated on all records
• Remove HTML and special characters from text fields

Phase 5: Ownership and Assignment

• Reassign leads from deactivated users
• Check for unassigned or orphaned records
• Verify territory assignments are current
• Clean up inactive lead statuses
• Archive closed-lost opportunities older than 12 months

Phase 6: Ongoing Maintenance Plan

• Set up monthly automated duplicate scans
• Schedule quarterly email re-verification
• Create validation rules to prevent bad data entry
• Establish naming conventions documentation for the team
• Set up alerts for bulk imports that skip validation
• Assign a data steward responsible for ongoing quality

Quality Metrics to Track

Metric	Target	Current
Duplicate rate	<2%	___%
Email validity rate	>95%	___%
Field completeness (critical fields)	>90%	___%
Records with no owner	0	___
Records updated in last 90 days	>60%	___%

Scrapine integrates directly with your CRM to continuously enrich and validate contact data, preventing the decay that makes these cleanups necessary in the first place.