If you’re tired of chasing down missing emails, fixing typos, or wondering if your CRM is lying to you, this is for you. You know your contact database is a mess, but you don’t have time to scrub it by hand or throw money at a “black box” tool that promises the moon. This guide walks you through how to actually automate data hygiene and enrichment using Nektar—with no fluff, just what works, what doesn’t, and what to ignore.
Why Data Hygiene Actually Matters (and What People Get Wrong)
Let’s be honest: most sales teams are sitting on a pile of half-baked contacts. Duplicates, old job titles, missing phone numbers, emails that bounce—sound familiar? Bad data means lost deals, wasted time, and reps chasing ghosts.
Here’s the reality:
- Dirty data kills productivity. Sales and marketing waste hours cleaning up messes or tracking down the right person.
- Enrichment isn’t magic. Fancy enrichment doesn’t help if you’re still working with duplicates and outdated info.
- Manual cleanup is a losing battle. No one wants to be the “CRM janitor.”
Automating hygiene and enrichment is about working smarter, not harder. But most tools oversell what they can do—or make you jump through hoops. Nektar cuts through some of that noise, but it’s not a one-button fix. Let’s break down how to use it properly.
Step 1: Get Real About Your Contact Data Mess
Before you touch Nektar or any tool, look your CRM in the eye and admit what’s broken. Be brutally honest—this saves headaches later.
Do this:
- Run a quick audit. How many contacts are missing emails or phone numbers? How many obvious duplicates? Any contacts with “asdf@asdf.com” type junk?
- Check your sources. Is data coming from web forms, rep imports, event lists, or scraped somewhere? Different sources = different problems.
- Find the pain points. Where do reps complain? (Hint: If they avoid using CRM, you have a problem.)
Pro tip: Don’t try to fix everything at once. Pick the ugliest, most costly problems to solve first.
Step 2: Understand What Nektar Actually Does (and Doesn’t Do)
Nektar plugs into your CRM and email/calendar tools to find, clean, and enrich your contact data automatically. Here’s what that really means:
What works:
- Automatic contact capture: Finds new contacts from email and meeting traffic, so you stop missing people you’re already talking to.
- Deduplication: Flags and merges duplicates, so you don’t annoy prospects with multiple emails.
- Basic enrichment: Fills in missing fields (phone, company, LinkedIn, etc.) using reputable third-party data.
What doesn’t work (don’t believe the hype):
- Not a magic bullet: If your CRM is a dumpster fire, Nektar won’t fix bad process or buy-in. Garbage in, garbage out.
- Not all enrichment is equal: It won’t always find personal cell numbers or super-recent job changes (nobody does, reliably).
- Still needs some oversight: You’ll want to review merges and flagged data occasionally, especially at first.
Bottom line: Nektar is great for “auto-cleaning” the obvious stuff and keeping things tidy, but you still need clear processes (and a little human touch).
Step 3: Connect Nektar to Your CRM and Communication Tools
This is where you actually hook things up. Nektar works best when plugged into both your CRM (like Salesforce or HubSpot) and your email/calendar (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365).
How to connect:
- Sign up and authenticate. Follow the prompts in Nektar to connect your CRM and email/calendar accounts. Don’t overthink it—permissions are pretty standard.
- Choose your sync settings. Decide whether to sync everyone or just certain teams (start small if you’re nervous).
- Map your fields. Make sure Nektar knows which CRM fields are for what (email, phone, company, etc.). This prevents weird overwrites.
What to watch out for:
- If your CRM has custom fields or odd data structures, double-check the mappings.
- Only give Nektar access to what it really needs—paranoid is smart here.
Pro tip: Test on a sandbox or a small user group before rolling out to your entire team. No one likes surprises.
Step 4: Set Up Data Hygiene Rules
This is where you decide what “clean” actually means for your team. Nektar lets you set rules for deduplication, data validation, and more.
Recommended setup:
- Deduplication: Merge contacts based on email (safest), and flag possible duplicates by name and company.
- Validation: Set rules for valid email formats, phone numbers, and required fields.
- Junk detection: Automatically ignore or flag contacts with obviously fake info (“asdf@asdf.com”, “123-456-7890”, etc.).
Be careful with automation:
- Don’t auto-merge everything. Review flagged duplicates before mass updates—especially at the start.
- Use “suggest” mode if you’re worried about losing data. You can approve changes before they go live.
What to skip: Don’t bother with hyper-granular rules (“only merge if the last name matches and job title is similar”). You’ll drown in exceptions. Start simple.
Step 5: Enrich Your Contact Data (But Don’t Go Overboard)
Now you can start to fill in the blanks. Nektar pulls in data from third-party sources to update missing fields—things like:
- Direct phone numbers
- LinkedIn profiles
- Company info (industry, size, HQ location)
- Job titles
How to use enrichment wisely:
- Prioritize missing core fields. Focus on filling in emails, phones, and LinkedIn URLs first—these drive the most value.
- Don’t expect miracles. Third-party data is often outdated or incomplete—especially for small companies or recent job changers.
- Review sensitive fields. If you care about privacy or compliance (GDPR, etc.), double-check what’s being added.
Pro tip: Enrichment is most useful for your active contacts—don’t waste cycles enriching dead leads from five years ago.
Step 6: Monitor, Review, and Iterate
No tool is truly “set-and-forget.” The good news: with Nektar, you spend a lot less time firefighting.
What to do each month:
- Review logs and reports. Check what’s being added, merged, or flagged. Look for weird spikes or errors.
- Spot check key accounts. Make sure your top 20 accounts have clean, complete data.
- Tweak rules as needed. If you’re seeing too many false duplicates or missed enrichments, adjust your settings.
What not to obsess over:
- Don’t try to get to 100% “perfect” data. It’s a myth (and a time sink).
- Don’t micromanage every suggestion. Let the tool do its job—focus on the outliers.
Pro tip: Set up a recurring 30-minute calendar block once a month to review hygiene updates with your ops or admin lead. That’s usually enough.
What to Ignore (For Now)
- Over-engineered workflows: Don’t build elaborate approval chains or try to automate every edge case. You’ll just slow down.
- Expensive enrichment add-ons: Start with Nektar’s built-in options before buying access to extra databases. Most teams find “good enough” is more than enough.
- Vanity metrics: Who cares if you have 50,000 contacts if half are junk? Focus on active, real people.
Keep It Simple—And Keep Improving
Here’s the truth: no tool, not even Nektar, can “fix” bad habits or make old data new again. But you can make your contact database a whole lot less painful—and stop wasting time cleaning up the same messes month after month.
Start with the basics, automate what you can, review just enough to stay out of trouble, and skip the rest. Data hygiene is a journey, not a checkbox. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the useful.
Now—go automate some of that grunt work, and get back to actually talking to your customers.