Your Marketing Is Only As Good As Your Data

Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) recently published their 7th Annual B2B Sales and Marketing Report. D&B surveyed 500 B2B sales and marketing decision makers in the US, UK and Canada. They discovered that “…the overwhelming majority of B2B organizations of all sizes have widely acknowledged that data quality is important. And 73% of respondents reported that they’ve increased their investment in data quality.”

D&B defines “data quality” as “data about the companies and contacts you care about that is consistently structured, current, complete, and accurate.”

As Michael Bird with D&B put it, “Many sales and marketing teams are still looking for that silver bullet. They hire more people … run more campaigns … or add to their martech stacks, only to find growth elusive. They haven’t succeeded because their focus has been on the tactic rather than the data driving it.”

We agree 100%. If you don’t have good information on target companies and contacts, then it is very difficult for marketers to reach them, know their likely pain points, segment them into meaningful Personas and support account-based marketing (ABM) strategies for personalizing content.

The numbers demonstrate the importance of data quality:

For companies that increased their investment in data quality, 100% saw overall performance gains and 94% report that their sales and marketing performance improved.
For companies that decreased their investment in data quality, 100% saw no improvement in sales and marketing performance, 75% saw a decline in sales and marketing performance and 35% saw overall performance decline.

Further, the survey identified that having high quality data is essential, it has no value if it isn’t used properly or at all. D&B reported that quality data is most effective when it is personalized and delivered via multiple channels, and that execution of account-based marketing (ABM) strategies require a strong data foundation.

Barriers to Investing in Quality Data

Marketers wanting to invest in quality B2B sales and marketing data quality, however, often run into hurdles. The chart below from Marketing Charts illustrates the top barriers to making greater investments in data quality, with 37% identifying cost as the top obstacle.

DnB Top Barriers B2B Sales Marketing Data Quality Investment May2020

The Pitfalls of Buying Data

The weakness of most marketing initiatives is the size of a company’s contact list. You can have compelling content, engaging graphic design and an integrated marketing automation platform, but if you don’t have a database even a well-crafted campaign is going to have a limited audience. Faced with the need to generate an audience quickly, many marketers will buy contacts from a list broker, but doing so can create serious pitfalls that could impair your overall marketing program. Here’s why:

Spam traps. Many list brokers “scrape” websites remotely with bots programmed to collect contact data from corporate websites, including emails, to create lists that they sell. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are on to this practice and work with companies to seed websites with valid, albeit fake, email addresses that are used as spam traps. The spam trap emails aren’t displayed publicly on the website, instead they are embedded in the web page code. If you buy a list that contains one or more spam traps and send it, the ISP is notified and Spamhaus (the Internet’s spam police) notifies its member companies and ISPs that your domain is associated with spam, which can have significant negative repercussions, the worst being your emails will never get to their intended recipients.

Hard bounces. Sending email campaigns to invalid emails will result in a hard bounce – a rejection. Over time, hard bounces can degrade your sending status and mark your business as a “spammer,” replete with all the negative impacts associated with getting caught with spam traps. There are email validation services we use to reduce and even eliminate

Obsolete data. Obsolete emails lead to hard bounces, but they also create lost opportunities. Having your sales team reach out to leads that don’t exist anymore is a waste of resources. Of course, list brokers will tell you it’s not a problem, for every hard bounce or bad contact they will replace it with another at no cost. But why would you want more data from the company that sold you invalid emails and spam traps in the first place? If they did it once, it is likely they will do it again with the replacement contacts. Reputable list companies and consultants will be transparent with their data hygiene practices – what they do to keep their list valid and up-to-date.

Build a Strong Foundation

The best content marketing strategies will fail to achieve expectations if they don’t rest on a solid foundation of quality data. We have run into the above problems and more, and we are better consultants for it, having the expertise to help clients develop, curate and acquire quality sales and marketing data.

Contact us today to discuss your data quality challenges and learn how we may be able to help you develop a strong foundation for your marketing program.

About Prism Group

Prism Group is a full-spectrum, multi-talented B2B agency focused on Energy Tech, Technology, Energy, Services and Media markets. Our work is telling stories that matter, because our clients are working to change the world for the better. What makes us different is that we put into action the strategies we recommend – we get it done, so you can get results and increase the value of your business.