Recently, NetProspex released their first B2B Marketing Data benchmark report, The State of Marketing Data 2013. Based on hundreds of millions of B2B contact data assessed over the past year, Netprospex provided a comprehensive assessment of the health of B2B marketing databases. The report looks at four key best practice areas regarding B2B data: record duplication, record completeness, email deliverability and phone connectability. A score was determined based on a 5 point scale, with 1 being considered “Risky” and 5 being “Optimal”.
Most marketers realize their campaigns will only be as good as the data being used in the campaign, so it was a little surprising to see such low scores being reported. What was scary for me was that the average overall score was only 2.7, meaning the organization’s database was just short of being “Questionable” but a little better than “Unreliable”. Overall, the report indicated that a majority of companies are paying attention to managing duplicates within their database. Most organizations ranked weakest on “phone connectability”, which makes sense considering many organization’s focus is on their email marketing and not outbound teleprospecting campaigns.
Some of the interesting findings/statistics shared in the benchmark report:
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64% of participants are risking their sales and marketing results by depending on “Unreliable” databases.
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More than 25% of data quality problems are caused by customer data entry errors, costing U.S. businesses more than $600 billion each year.
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Untargeted email programs increase costs by as much as 3.6 times the cost of targeted programs.
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Companies that employ consistent data hygiene create 7x the number of inquiries and 4x the number of leads.
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On average, respondents of the study scored a 2.5 or “Unreliable” on Record Completeness.
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With 20% of repsondents performing in the “Unreliable” category and the remainder in the “Risky” cagtegory, there is definitive room for improvement around phone contact data.
Organizations who don’t pay attention to proper database maintenance and upkeep run the risk of: falling short of revenue goals from not reaching targeted buyers, damage to their brand and reputation, financial implications from increased storage costs and limited segmentation that leads to low conversion rates and incorrect lead nurturing programs. Considering so many people change jobs annually, it is now more important than ever for organizations to focus on data hygiene.
When was the last time you had someone look at your database within your organization? What are the chances that your organization is using “Questionable” or “Unreliable” data? According to this report, the chances are pretty high!
