What it means
CRM hygiene is the ongoing work of keeping CRM data accurate, complete and free of duplicates. It covers merging duplicate records, fixing broken links between contacts and accounts, and filling or removing empty fields. It also means retiring contacts who have left and keeping ownership clear.
Clean data is what makes reporting, routing and scoring trustworthy. A duplicate splits one account's history across two records, so neither of them tells you the truth.
How we use it
We run five cleanup passes before a single email goes out: duplicates, dead contacts, suppressions, ownership and empty fields. They can run in any order, and all five have to happen. Each one is finished when a check passes, such as one record per domain.
When a company cannot tell us its own TAM, duplicates, broken account hierarchies and missing scores have been behind it every time. After the cleanup, required fields and a scoring gate stop the mess coming back. The full set is in our CRM setup checklist.