Marketing professionals know that the data you select to run your marketing campaigns can make or break the campaign. Firing at the wrong target means you’re unlikely to ever hit the bullseye. It doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do, simply, if you don’t target the right customers, you will fail.
Without question, the careful selection of your target audience will enhance the likelihood of campaign success.
Sobering Data Statistics
A recent scan of industry research produced some staggering facts and figures:
- If it costs £1 to process a simple operation or transaction when all the data is perfect, this will rise to £10 if it is not.
- Despite the fact that failure to comply with Data Protection legislation can result in fines up to £5,000, 45 per cent of companies are not suppressing their customer data to remove individuals who cannot or will not respond to offers.
- B2B contact data (names, roles, addresses, phone numbers and email) decays at 37.7% a year
- On average up to 20% of Managing Directors, 33% of Sales Directors and 50% of Marketing Directors change every year.
The Tip of the Iceberg
Unfortunately, the above is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much change in B2B Date, yet businesses seem to think that marketing teams are miracle workers. Wastage and obsolescence damages most outbound campaigns. Simply, it takes longer to reach the right people, costs more and extends the time to reach positive ROI. Marketing budgets can only go so far and the requirement for quick returns is only growing.
Take a look at a few more sobering statistics:
- 5.7m business details change every year:
- a company name change occurs every minute
- a business closes every 2 minutes
- a business fails every 4 minutes
- a business moves office every 6 minutes
- 37% of your business customer records will be out of date within a year – losing you sales and wasting your money.
- £18 million per year is wasted mailing the deceased.
Most of our work is done in the B2B Marketing world. And, this segment of the market is far from immune from change. As a consequence, up to 67% of UK B2B mailings contain errors. What’s more, 88% of all data integration projects fail or run over budget because of poor quality data.
What’s the Upshot?
Perhaps it isn’t cool for marketing executives to focus on data. There’s no doubt that devising and running creative campaigns is more appetising that undertaking data cleansing exercises. Yet, the market for data solutions has grown enormously over the past several years. The advent of artificial intelligence and data analytics facilitates effective marketing outreach. And, with more accurate data comes better, and quicker, results. So, make sure that a core early part of any marketing campaign is data building and/or data validation. Your sales teams, and your senior financial management, will thank you for it.
