Email marketing databases decay at 22.5% per year and at one large American bank it needed a 100-employee task force to recover a database riddled with inaccurate information.
A study published in Professional Security magazine found that 20% of businesses report having lost a customer due to bad data. And it can cost you more than just an individual client when you consider the other ways it can harm your business.
If data is inaccurate, out of date or misleading it goes from being a useful business tool to being harmful. We’ve explored some of the critical functions bad data can undermine in your organisation.
1. Missed Sales Opportunities
One of the biggest dangers of having bad data in your CRM is that you could be leaving sales opportunities on the table. Inaccurate information on the financial health of a business may mean investing time nurturing a lead, only to find out later that they don’t have the resources to invest in your product or service.
Bad data can limits sales opportunities by hindering your messaging. You may end up targeting a client with a standard introduction which is easily ignored when better data would have enabled a highly targeted message that really engaged the prospect. For example, having granular SIC code data will allow you to target your messaging, so it resonates with a very specific sector.
2. Your Sales Team Don’t Know What They’re Missing
Data provides a constant stream of sales opportunities – every day there are over 100,000 new snippets of information from British businesses.
- New directors starting
- Profit warnings
- Insolvency
- New locations
- A decrease in financial health
- Expansion
- Bad debt
A salesperson who takes advantage of this information has a huge advantage; selling to a customer when they have a specific need gives a salesperson an excellent narrative for the approach and allows them to articulate their value proposition in the context of a current situation.
Consider a financial services organisation that is looking to target businesses that have suffered a bad debt. Only the latest creditor services data would allow you to find out in real time the 2,500 to 4,000 businesses that suffer a bad debt every week when a debtor enters insolvency. Approaching a business that has suffered a bad debt in the past three days is going to be more powerful than a speculative enquiry.
3. Harder to Qualify Prospects
At the qualification stage, you need to know quickly whether a business will benefit from your product or service, that the person you’re speaking to can say ‘yes’, and that they have the budget to ensure you can complete the sale. It’s hard to know any of this if you’re working with low-quality data.
When you can properly qualify your prospects, you’re able to zero in on the best prospects and make sure the messaging is appropriate for them. Saving the sales team considerable time and improving close rates is particularly important if you’re working with businesses that generate large lead volumes.
4. Makes Marketing Automation More Difficult
We know that implementing marketing automation is already difficult enough, but low-quality data makes the task even harder. Rich data can help personalise your content and marketing initiatives, and deliver them to the right businesses at the right time.
Poor data can undermine sophisticated marketing automation campaigns because it restricts your ability to segment and nurture customers.
5. Wastes Company Time and Resources
There is nothing more frustrating when you work in a competitive environment than spending the time nurturing a lead only to find out you’re using out-of-date information. For example, building a relationship and pitching your services to someone who is not the key decision-maker within the business.
Also, in the research above published in 2019, it was reported that 17% of businesses said they’ve extended the credit line too far for customers, based on out-of-date or low-quality data. Of course this puts the organisation in a more vulnerable financial position, but think too of the time and resources that have been spent nurturing that relationship only to find that it isn’t as financially rewarding as initially projected.
Red Flag Alert is Here to Help!
Here at Red Flag Alert, we have seen time and time again how low-quality data can damage organisations. Our business intelligence solution provides real-time data on every business in the UK. From financial health to key decision-makers, our data provides the intelligence you need to work smarter and more effectively.
- 6.5 million UK businesses.
- 20 million key decision-makers.
- 100,000 data updates every day.
- 100+ indicators of financial health.
- 50+ filters of key business data.
- 7 detailed financial health ratings.
- 2.6 million telephone records.
Let us show you how Red Flag Alert can help your business, click here to start a free trial.
