As organizations increasingly use data and analytics to help make business decisions and base their strategies on the insights gathered from them, ensuring that you have reliable data is imperative. Yet, some firms still don’t see why data quality is so important.

Marketing departments in B2B organizations are facing a data deluge with high volumes of information coming from diverse, disparate systems and sources such as CRMs, eMarketing and marketing automation platforms, social media platforms, financial systems and others. And when it comes to marketing activities, good data is essential because bad data leads to bad marketing outcomes.

There are also a number of other reasons why data quality should be at the top of your to-do list. Without good data quality, you will face a number of other challenges, including:

1. Ineffective Communication:

• You can create the best content, design a state-of-the-art email newsletter and host the most timely and useful webinars, but if you can’t reach your target audiences, your marketing efforts will be less effective, if not futile. In addition, when invitations don’t reach the right audiences, you can’t ensure the right people will attend your events and webinars and will end up wasting time and money. And if your contact database is filled with outdated or irrelevant contact information, you’ll end up with lower open rates and higher unsubscribes.

2. Lower technology adoption:

• If your systems are littered with duplicative and/or dated data, users won’t participate, and your technology investments will not yield real results.

3. Lack of coordination:

• Unless everyone in your organization is working from the same data, it’s difficult to coordinate marketing and sales or business development efforts and activities. When the left hand (or department) doesn’t know what the right is doing, it can affect your organization’s reputation. Coordinating the sharing of information (correct information) is essential.

4. Poor data quality, poor client service:

• Information is power when it comes to your clients and customers. Data is essential to understand what they really want and effectively anticipate their needs.

5. Missed business opportunities:

• By continually connecting with existing customers, clients and prospects can you find opportunities for new and repeat business. But without good data, these connections can be missed. Investing is good data is just smart business.

6. Increased costs of compliance:

• Global and regional data privacy rules and regulations such as CASL, GDPR and CCPA are increasing, and the costs for failure to comply can be significant. These types of laws require organizations to properly handle and maintain current data on contacts in order to honor their requests for information and prevent inappropriate communications.

So now that everyone understands how important data quality is, the next question becomes… who is going to do it?

Assigning data quality responsibilities to knowledgeable, dedicated individuals is essential to the success of your marketing technology efforts – but not everyone can hire internal staff for that position. Fortunately, you don’t have to. You can also outsource this role to experienced data professionals and get exactly the amount of data stewarding time you need to meet your needs and budget. For more information on outsourcing data quality, check out this post.

If you want to make informed marketing decisions that contribute to the bottom line, improving data quality must be at the top of your to-do list. Improving data quality can seem like a daunting task but making the effort can enhance your marketing and business development success.