5 Quick Tips for Cleaning Up Your Marketing Database

Is your marketing database dirty? Database quality remains a top concern for B2B marketers despite the explosion of vendors claiming to solve the problem. Marketers say the most common database issues include:

  • Incomplete records
  • Invalid email addresses
  • Invalid phone numbers
  • Duplicate records

In our 2016 B2B Technology Buyers Survey, we found:

  • 41% of B2B tech buyers plan on changing jobs in the next 12-months.
  • 81% of B2B tech buyers use false info to subscribe to content, “often.”

According to the recent State of Pipeline Marketing Report, only 6.6% of B2B marketers say their prospect data is accurate.1 That means ~93% of marketers are facing professional consequences for poor database quality – performance stats are dragged down, goals are missed, and budgets are cut.

Integrate regularly publishes content detailing the negative impact on their blog. They find dirty data:

  • Skews conversion insights and reduces optimization effectiveness
  • Requires manual lead cleansing that slows velocity of the entire pipeline
  • Wastes time and resources
  • Diminishes customer experience
  • Decreases ROI of marketing automation and CRM investments2

A common trait of the most successful B2B marketers is a proactive approach to data quality. Most top marketers dedicate internal resources and make external investments in the following practices:

  • De-duplication of records
  • Data requalification / validation
  • Appending missing record information
  • Data normalization
  • Appending of segmenting and targeting data to net new records

Are there any other tips you think could help marketers clean up their databases? Let us know and we’ll add them to the list.


1 Bizable, Heinz, Uberflip, Radius, LinkedIn, State of Pipeline Marketing, 2017
2 Integrate, Infographic: Causes and Consequences of Dirty Data, 2015