The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) and Validity have published the ‘Email Data Quality: Compliant, Correct and Complete’ report. The report highlights the importance most marketers place in data quality and its three core tenets of compliance, correctness, and completeness.
The report reveals that the majority of organisations monitor data quality (77%) and agree that it’s a very important part of their email marketing programme (62%) – or at least moderately important (33%), with just 6% saying it is unimportant. However, just two-thirds of marketers (67%) rate their organisation’s level of data quality as at least good compared to industry best practice.
In addition, the use of KPIs to measure the quality of data are common (61%), but they’re not yet universal. The most popular metrics show a tendency towards choosing ‘good news’ measures – engagement rates (40%) and sales/revenue (37%) being the two most common. The cost of not getting data quality right is significant too, with the average cost per acquisition for each new customer estimated to be between £26-33.
The report highlights a common trait of organisations with a more advanced and developed data quality strategy – this was the use of a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to store their customer data (33%). For instance, these businesses are more likely to have a preference centre in place (25%) and use it to collect additional information on their customers (31%) – directly connecting to the pillar of completeness and ensuring brands have all the information they need.
“Data is, naturally, a vital part of our industry. Without it, marketers would not be able to understand customers, reach out and engage them. Therefore, it’s incredibly important that marketers have at their disposal data that is compliant, correct, and complete,” says Tim Bond, Head of Insight at the DMA. “It is reassuring to see that most organisations monitor their data quality and agree it’s important, but there are also some clear opportunities for many businesses to do more to ensure their data strategy seeks to enhance their overall data quality.”
Guy Hanson, Vice President of Customer Engagement, Validity International, said: “All-too-often, data quality represents a classic case of not knowing what you don’t know, which is why the findings in this report are so important. The results surface what’s important when it comes to the “3Cs” of data quality: compliance, correctness, and completeness. Providing a benchmark of where you and your organisation are on your data quality journey, as well as flagging up opportunities for improvement.”
Further information about the report can be found on the DMA website: https://dma.org.uk/research/email-data-quality-compliant-correct-and-complete
