CRM Data Cleaning

Dirty CRM data leads to wasted sales efforts, emails in spam, and unnecessary costs. Allegrow automates CRM data cleaning by identifying invalid emails, spam traps, and duplicates—ensuring accurate, actionable data for sales and marketing success.

Allegrow for CRM data Cleaning

The days of people struggling to find enough data to fill up their CRM with lots of contacts are long gone! Now the primary challenge is that data flows into the CRM from multiple sources and is inevitably inaccurate, in some cases toxic (like spam traps), or becomes outdated very quickly. 

Which has created the need for conducting CRM data cleaning on a continuous basis. But, of course, with the scale of data being added to your CRM (i.e. adding thousands or hundreds of thousands of contacts at a time), you can’t be expected to identify, resolve, and remove data to maintain a cleansed CRM manually. 

Allegrow is the solution to conduct this use-case thoroughly, consistently and automatically at scale. We do this by automatically identifying invalid contacts, spam traps and dead emails in your CRM, so you can remove or segment them correctly to avoid deliverability issues and have your sales and marketing team take revenue producing actions based on the outcome of this cleaning. 

Allegrow’s CRM Data Cleaning Tools

  • Email Verifier - An email verifier tool inside Allegrow allows you to clean your CRM by automatically identifying which email contacts are invalid. This typically happens when inaccurate contacts have been added to the CRM from purchased lists or contacts have moved to a new job, making their previous email invalid.
    Spam Trap Identification – Flags potential spam traps in your CRM that could damage your sender reputation if emailed. Spam traps are designed to catch senders who do not follow proper list hygiene. Allegrow helps you avoid these traps by identifying risky contacts before emails are sent.
  • Syntax Error / Typo Check – Detects and corrects formatting errors in email addresses to reduce bounce rates. Common errors like missing '@' symbols, misplaced dots, or incorrect domain formats are automatically flagged and corrected to prevent delivery failures.
  • Dead Email Checker – Monitors email activity to identify and remove addresses that are no longer active. This helps prevent emails from being sent to invalid contacts, improving engagement rates and ensuring that your domain reputation remains intact.
  • HubSpot CRM Integration – Seamlessly allowed bulk CSV data cleaning with a full HubSpot integration for automated CRM data cleaning and segmentation arriving shortly. This allows sales and marketing teams to maintain high-quality data without manual intervention, ensuring that HubSpot records remain accurate.
  • Close CRM Integration – Supports Close CRM users in maintaining a clean and accurate contact database. This integration helps streamline CRM hygiene by automatically flagging and updating incorrect or outdated contact records within Close.
  • Bulk CSV Uploads of CRM Segments – Allows users to upload large contact lists for analysis and cleaning at scale. This feature is ideal for businesses managing large datasets that need to be regularly verified, deduplicated, and refined.
  • Spam Report Risk Finder – Identifies high-risk contacts likely to mark emails as spam, protecting sender reputation. Allegrow analyzes historical engagement and industry blacklists to predict which contacts may be a risk for spam complaints, helping to maintain email deliverability.
  • Support for Creating Automated Workflows – Automates CRM data cleaning to maintain data hygiene with minimal manual effort. Users can set up scheduled cleaning processes to remove outdated, duplicate, or risky contacts without needing to perform manual audits.
  • Domain Reputation Monitoring – Tracks domain health and sender reputation to prevent deliverability issues before they arise. By continuously monitoring key domain metrics, Allegrow helps businesses stay ahead of potential email blacklisting or reputation damage.

Data Cleansing Best Practices

Regularly Validate Email Addresses

Ensuring that email addresses in your CRM are valid is crucial for maintaining effective communication and reducing bounce rates. For example, Domo found while implementing email validation and risk analysis, they drove S1 pipeline conversions up by 10%. By implementing regular email validation, businesses can expect higher deliverability rates and improved engagement with their audience.​

Identify and Eliminate Duplicates

Duplicate records in a CRM create confusion, leading to multiple sales reps reaching out to the same lead or inconsistent customer data. Best practice dictates regular deduplication using automation to merge similar records. For instance, PayFit, a payroll and HR technology company, faced a situation where approximately 30% of their accounts and 25-30% of contacts were duplicates. By implementing a deduplication strategy, they reduced duplicate company records and improved sales efficiency. 

Remove Inactive Contacts

Maintaining a CRM filled with inactive contacts can waste resources. You’ll see many members of the HubSpot Community and others emphasize the importance of identifying disengaged contacts and removing them from lists to improve targeting and reduce CRM bills. Specifically, Tom from Baskey Digital mentions how removing contacts can have a positive impact on overall CRM utilization efficiency. Many policies prior to September 2021, will focus on open tracking, which has become increasingly unreliable to judge inactivity. Therefore, on your sunsetting policy to identify inactive contacts, you will want to consider additional engagement measures like link clicks and website visits, for example, if a contact shows no link clicks or website visits in the previous 90 days, this can trigger contacts being added to an inactive audience and then sunset if they don’t engage with a final contact workflow.

Standardize Data Entry

​Standardizing data entry avoids operational errors, as even large companies suffer big losses due to data entry errors. Like Samsung, issuing $105 billion worth of shares incorrectly. Therefore, businesses of every size should aim to minimize these errors with the following best practices to standard data entry: 

  • Use Mandatory Fields – Enforce required fields for key data points such as name, email, company name, and phone number to ensure completeness of records. 
  • Create Drop-Down Menus for Common Fields – Instead of free-text input, use predefined options for fields like industry, job title, and lead source to maintain consistency.​
  • Implement Automated Formatting Rules – Standardize how data is inputted (e.g., all phone numbers follow the same format, capitalization rules for names) to reduce errors.​
  • Leverage CRM Validation Features – Many CRMs, including HubSpot and Salesforce, allow for rule-based validation that prevents incorrect data from being entered.​
  • Set maximum values – Set maximum values or lengths for specific fields to avoid large scale errors. 
  • Train Teams on Data Entry Best Practices – Providing structured guidelines and training sessions for sales and marketing teams ensures long-term data consistency.​

Automate Data Cleaning

Manual data cleaning is time-consuming and prone to errors. Automation tools help maintain an up-to-date CRM, reducing human error and improving efficiency. For example, Spring Labs leveraged Allegrow’s Safety Net feature to prevent outdated and risky emails from being sent. This ensured that their sales team avoided sending messages to stale contacts, significantly reducing bounce rates to below 3% and improving sender reputation to a consistent 95%. By automating data cleaning processes, businesses can enhance email deliverability, protect their domain reputation, and optimize CRM performance for more effective decision-making.

Why Data Cleaning Produces Revenue

When done correctly, data cleaning doesn’t just improve operational efficiency—it uncovers new revenue opportunities and enables automation that directly impacts sales. A clean, structured, and up-to-date CRM helps sales and marketing teams engage the right contacts at the right time, improving conversion rates and accelerating revenue growth.

Here’s how effective data cleaning contributes to revenue generation:

  • Surface Job Changes – Automatically identify when a contact’s email becomes invalid due to a job change. Reach out to them in their new role to re-establish the relationship and create new sales opportunities.
  • Automate Sourcing of New Contacts – When contacts at key accounts go stale, automatically source new decision-makers at the same company to maintain engagement and continue sales discussions.
  • Generate More Leads by Avoiding the Spam Folder – Removing invalid and disengaged contacts improves overall email deliverability, ensuring that sales and marketing messages reach inboxes rather than spam folders.
  • Reach Contacts on Their Preferred Channel – Cleaning the CRM to merge duplicate records and identifying likely spam reports over email, allows your team to make use of other communication channels towards a contact and reach those contacts on the channel that’s most likely to engage them. 
  • Increase Conversion Rates by Prioritizing the Best Accounts and Contacts – Clean CRM data enables proper segmentation, helping sales teams focus on high-intent leads and reducing time wasted on low-value prospects.

By integrating these data-driven strategies, businesses can maximize the value of their CRM and build a scalable, revenue-focused approach to sales and marketing. Investing in data cleaning isn’t just about maintaining database accuracy—it’s about unlocking untapped sales opportunities that drive growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is data cleaning?

Data cleaning is the process of identifying, correcting, or removing inaccurate, outdated, or duplicate records in a database to maintain data integrity and accuracy.

What are some CRM data cleaning examples?

Examples include removing duplicate leads, validating email addresses, updating job titles, and segmenting inactive contacts.

Are some CRM data cleaning tools free?

Yes, some basic tools offer free data cleaning features, but they often lack any email verification capabilities beyond basic syntax checks. This means at scale there’s a need for enterprise-level CRM hygiene solutions.

How is Allegrow different from OpenRefine?

OpenRefine is a powerful open-source data cleaning tool, but Allegrow specializes in CRM-specific data hygiene, focusing on email validation, spam trap identification, and domain reputation monitoring.

Does Allegrow work for a HubSpot data cleanup?

Yes, you can clean CRM data from Hubspot via upload to Allegrow. Shortly, Allegrow will integrate directly with HubSpot, providing automated cleaning and segmentation for HubSpot CRM users.

Where are the most helpful communities for data cleaning blogs and tips?

Some of the most active communities include the: HubSpot Community, Salesforce Trailblazer Community, LinkedIn Sales and Marketing Groups, Data Cleaning & Management Subreddits, and Allegrow's Blog for CRM Best Practices