What is the size of your annual marketing campaign budget? Take the total number and now remove 70%. Looks rather smaller now, doesn’t it? What if we were to tell you that figure is a true representation of the budget you have dedicated to reaching your target audience?
The Stark Cost of Bad Quality Data
The trouble with some marketing departments is that they view each channel as a separate line item (we have X for direct mail and Y for display), without seeing their marketing budget as a whole. This means that when a cost affects their entire marketing budget, such as, say, marketing data, they are unaware of the full effect it has overall.
It’s a truth which makes a lot of marketers feel uncomfortable but the fact is up to 70% of most third-party sourced data is inaccurate, according to independent data evaluator Truthset. In order to understand the true cost of inaccurate marketing data, marketers need to stop thinking in terms of line items in their budget and instead consider how bad data affects nearly every aspect of their campaigns. Let’s take a minute to think about that in real terms:
You’re running an email campaign - how much budget have you wasted?
If the average list cost is $100 per thousand records and assuming you purchase a hundred thousand records for $10,000, it is likely 70% of those records are inaccurately categorised and therefore out of your target audience. That means you could be wasting $7,000 on data records that are completely irrelevant to your campaign.
You’re running a direct mail campaign - how much budget have you wasted?
The cost is even more stark with a direct mail campaign. Yes, you may have wasted $7,000 on bad data but that’s not the end of it. You would also waste another $40,600 on postage, sending direct mail to 70,000 irrelevant addresses at 58 cents a pop. That’s $47,600 wasted, without even taking into account the wasted print costs.
You’re running a display campaign - how much budget have you wasted?
It’s a similar situation for marketers running display campaigns. With media usually costing around 85% of the spend, you could be racking up yet another cost due to inaccurate data.
Breaking Down Marketing Silos
So what can be done to ensure all of that marketing budget is not wasted?
First of all, in order to understand the full effect bad quality data is having on your marketing output, make sure your marketing department is sharing information across teams, i.e. the email team needs to know what’s going on with the direct mail team and the mobile team.
This sharing of data and information will ultimately lead to a breaking down of silos, an increased visibility across the department and the possibility to run true multichannel campaigns. According to SAS, multichannel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers do and a survey by PFL showed marketers who use 4-6 channels in their multichannel campaigns report the best response rates. And the greater the visibility and access to information on response, conversions etc, the better your multichannel campaigns will be in the future.
Working with A Trusted Data Partner
We also believe marketing teams need to prioritize data accuracy above all else. That means working with a data partner that puts data quality first. At Lighthouse List, we do just that:
Firstly, we work with independent data evaluator, Truthset, which regularly validates our data sets to ensure data quality and accuracy. We’re pleased to report that our most recent data evaluation from Q3 2021 had us tied first in data accuracy for age data, for multicultural data, for income data and for pet ownership data. We also come out on top for identifying married consumers.
Secondly, our data is sourced from a network of carefully vetted and privacy-compliant partners providing online engagements, brand signals, in-market shopping behaviors, location data, purchase transactions, registrations and form fills, surveys, voter registration, SDKs and mobile apps.
Thirdly, we have a blend of first, second, third party data and our data is truly multichannel. Whether you’re looking for cookies, MAIDs, HEMS, IP addresses, CTV IDS, postal addresses or email addresses, we can help you to run a high-performing multichannel campaign.
Finally, nearly 50% of our PII data has at least ten matches from different sources, whilst 50% our phone data has at least two matches. What's more, we link our data to three billion transactions daily, ensuring maximum accuracy. Our extensive cross-validation and cross-channel sourcing process guarantees a high level of data accuracy in our consumer audiences.
So if you’d like to cut your waste, speak to us about your data needs today. Try our 3000+ on-demand audiences for your next marketing campaign or we can build you a custom audience, ready within 72 hours.
