We all have one. Some of us have multiple. You may even have one in every room of your house. It’s the junk drawer.

True Story: I was looking for a piece of wood in my garage to prop up my desk for a project. It was not until I took and posted the image for this post, that I saw the perfect piece (gray on the right) in my junk drawer.

I think we all have two kinds of junk drawers. One where we place things we actually use all the time but don’t want to leave on the table or counter. The second is the one where we put stuff we think you will need one day, and ultimately forget where it is or that we even have it somewhere.

Business data (especially in marketing) is part of the lifeblood of business. Yet it is often neglected and lacks organization. It can be organized like a junk drawer or a workbench that is accessed when you need a tool.

Email – The collection of email addresses we get from our online forms, accounting data, and CRM.

Social Media – Connections can often be exported using a CRM. I use Nimble’s LinkedIn Prospector often for this purpose.

CRM – These can often be imported and exported from your online forms, accounting data, tradeshows, and other business interactions.

Segmenting success is in the eye of the beholder. You want to segment to make it useful to each branch of your tree. If accounting can find clients, and sales can find prospects that’s great, but further segmenting should have a purpose, not just a label.

You want to make it visible and useful as with your primary junk drawer. It will always have some things that you don’t use often, but when you need them, they’re accessible.

In this episode, we will discuss how your data can be treated like a junk drawer, and how you can work with it and your staff to make it more useful and relevent.