The Cost of Bad Data Quality

Like many modern businesses, you probably rely heavily on your data. But unless your data is of the highest quality, it’s costing your business in many ways – some of which may not be immediately apparent.

Join me, and take a look at the cost of bad data quality, starting with the obvious…

I’m betting that at some point you send emails. Whether you’re nurturing your potential and new customers, launching a new line, or simply sending a monthly newsletter, it has to get to the right recipient. Having even a small percentage of bad email addresses means you’re losing money.

If you’ve spent $1,500 dollars on an email campaign to 5,000 recipients and 5% of your emails can’t reach the right recipient, that’s 250 people that don’t get the chance to spend money with you and you’ve wasted $75 the minute you hit ‘send’.

I know $75 may not sound much but trust me, it gets much worse. Let’s say your average sale is $500 and your conversion rate is 10%. You’ve just lost 25 sales, for a total cost of $12,575.

And it’s not just email that’s affected.

Direct mail can fall victim to bad data with the same outcome, but it usually costs you even more money than with email. In a report published in 2015, the US Postal Service (USPS) estimated that in 2013 approximately 6.8 billion pieces of mail could not be delivered as addressed.

If your business is one of those that still sends out catalogues, you’re losing even more. If you spend $7,500 getting your catalogue designed, and another $3,500 getting 5,000 copies printed and mailed, you’ve spent $11,000. If 5% of those catalogues can’t be delivered that’s $550 wasted right off the bat. Assuming the same conversion rate and average sale, you’ve lost $13,050.

In other words, sending an email AND a catalog to 5,000 customers every month for a year is going to cost you $306,600!

DataMatch contains email list cleaner software which will suggest correct entries for incorrect email addresses, automating a highly manual process, checking syntax gTLDS (.com, .org, etc) and ccTLDS (.uk, .au,.ca, etc.)

There’s more than just a monetary cost. Bad data can badly damage your reputation.

One of the effects of bad data for companies that send out a lot of email is a low sender reputation. Contrary to common belief, this problem doesn’t just occur when your emails trigger spam alerts.

If an email address has a misspelling or other error, it can be marked as undeliverable and bounced back to you. And too many undeliverable emails can result in a bad sender reputation with your email provider. When that happens, it can lower – or even prevent – the deliverability of future emails, even when you use the correct email address and have followed opt-in best practices. Your emails start hitting the spam folder and even that, depending on the email software the recipient is using, can compound the issue.

The damage caused in this scenario by poor data quality on your reputation can remain for months or years affecting your email marketing campaigns.