What Is Your Bad Data Really Costing You?

How current is your prospect/customer information in your marketing database?  It’s 2016, when was the last time you reviewed your data?

If the answer is more than six months ago, your data has decayed.  On average data decays at a rate of 2% per month – which could impact 25% of your database over the course of a year!

Some people say “So What?”, well here is what that bad data is costing you…

1.  If you have a marketing automation system or email blast system in the cloud – you may be paying per contact or per email sent.  If so, you are paying real money for the bad information.
2. Email addresses that are incorrect get bounced.  Many email systems monitor bounce rates and if they get high, the sender is marked as a SPAMmer and may get blocked.  Meaning any emails you send to ANYONE on that system will not receive your email in their “in bin”.
3. Bad Phone numbers waste time for your sales team.  Marketing may send a scored list of top prospects to call – if the phone number is bad when sales tries to call, they will most likely spend time researching the person to find the correct phone number.  Ask your sales team how much time they waste on this effort that could be saved with verifying the information ahead of time.
4. Bad addresses can cost postage and printing on mailing – including if the person is no longer employed at a company or moved and the address is no longer forwarded.
5. Outdated demographic data can impact your ability to properly segment and categorize a prospect or customer for a marketing campaign – making the message less relevant for that audience – or missing them all together.  With features like Microsoft’s “Clutter” folder, emails may go into a hidden folder that is infrequently accessed by your target if they receive enough emails from you that are not relevant and not opened.
6. Multiple messages that aren’t relevant increase your unsubscribe rates.

How can you avoid these costly mistakes?  Clean your data regularly.  It is recommended to clean, verify and update your prospect and customer data every six months to keep your database working effectively for you.  This includes adding missing information and merging duplicate records.  There are ways to do this manually, through programs and through apps in the cloud.

If you are concerned about data quality, but not sure how to address it, contact Marketing Management Solutions today for a Data Quality Assessment.