Keeping a clean prospect database matters. It can make or break your ability to reach, engage and, ultimately, sell to the right decisionmakers. Unfortunately, all the job changes of the Great Resignation have wreaked havoc on data quality. Recently Toolbox.com, a leading IT publication, gave me the opportunity to share my thoughts on what marketers can do to take back control of their prospect data. In the article I offer four tips for keeping data clean – take a look at the highlights below:

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This guest article first appeared in Toolbox.com.

The future of work is changing. And not just for businesses. No longer limited by location, employees have realized they can work from anywhere, and they can also work for a company anywhere. They’re evaluating their priorities, and if their current workplace isn’t a good fit, they’re leaving. Recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that voluntary separations have spiked.

After a season of furloughs, layoffs and businesses permanently shutting their doors, employees are now leaving the workforce in droves by choice. Termed the “Great Resignation,” this exodus is shaking up businesses from the inside out. Teams are short-staffed, workflows are disrupted, and increased time and money is spent finding and hiring new employees. 

What does the “Great Resignation” mean for your acquisition marketing? B2B buyers are being affected, too. This means your prospect database — the email addresses, phone numbers, names of buyers who’ve expressed interest in your solution — is suddenly a whole lot less accurate. 

No matter how clever your content, strategic your timing, or meticulous your segmenting, if the data you’re drawing from is inaccurate, your results will be limited.

The Cost of Bad Data

Quality data is the foundation of strong digital marketing. But an Intentsify and Ascend2 study showed that actionable data is still a challenge for more than a quarter (27%) of B2B marketers.

Before you even think about your next acquisition campaign, it’s time to evaluate the quality of your prospect contact data and get a handle on it now while you can. If the contacts you’re targeting with your personalized messages, including display ads, email marketing and more, are no longer employed at the same company (or even employed at all), all the effort and resources you’ve spent are wasted. Your campaign performance will suffer, not to mention the morale of the hardworking employees you still have. 

There’s also a risky cost to working with bad data. Too many bounced emails? You could damage your email send score and IP address reputation, leading to your emails ending up in spam for the correct contacts, too. Using bad data can be costly to your business, too — it comes with significant risks of landing on spam blacklists.

Digital Impact

Also, consider that email addresses are used to build digital profiles and match identity graphs. Mismatched data — attributing an individual contact to a company they no longer work with — can lower your identity graph match rates, thus lowering your campaign’s digital reach and exposure. With the Great Resignation, these mismatches are likely now at an all-time high.

Display ad delivery is also impacted by the changing market. Business emails are matched to an individual’s personal email to serve an ad. If the business email is no longer valid due to job changes, business closures or something else, then your campaign reach suffers. And with work from home continuing to increase, campaigns using mobile IDs may also experience lower performance.

Read on for my four tips on how to keep your prospect data clean – you can find the complete article here. Also, feel free to reach out to me or my team for support with all things data.

Outward Media’s proven data cleansing services and targeted, accurate B2B data can enable you to achieve better digital marketing ROI and, ultimately, convert more prospects into customers. Go here to find out about leveraging our SMB and medical market data on the LiveRamp Data Marketplace, where 95% of our email data matches the identity graph for use with display ad marketing.