Is your CRM lying to you? The hidden costs of dirty B2B data

B2B marketers are under more pressure to deliver results and buyer expectations for online experiences keep rising. The good news is that you probably have more data than ever to leverage to achieve those results.

Here’s the catch, though: if your CRM is cluttered with stale contacts, duplicate records and mismatched account info, all that data may be doing more harm than good.

Organizations lose an average of $13 million annually due to poor data quality, according to IDC estimates I came across when researching the new MarTech Intelligence Report on B2B Data Enrichment and Hygiene. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, data never stays clean and up-to-date. Approximately 5 million Americans leave their jobs every month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which rapidly ages the information in even the most carefully curated marketing databases.

So before your next campaign underperforms or your next sales call goes sideways, it’s worth asking: Is your CRM quietly sabotaging your go-to-market strategy?

The ROI of clean, enriched data

When your data is off, everything else suffers. Email bounces increase. Lead scores miss the mark. Targeting and personalization fall flat. That’s not just a technology issue — it’s a revenue issue.

High-performing marketing teams today are investing in data enrichment and hygiene platforms that:

• Cleanse duplicate or incorrect records.
• Enrich leads with current job titles, technographics and intent signals.
• Validate emails and phone numbers in realtime.
• Resolve identities across platforms to maintain a unified view.

These aren’t just operational conveniences. They’re the foundation for effective segmentation, compliant outreach and the kind of personalized engagement that modern B2B buyers expect.

AI won’t save you from bad data

Many marketers are leaning into AI to improve campaign performance — but those tools are only as good as the data behind them. As Forrester notes, data quality is now the top barrier to successful GenAI adoption. The old adage applies more than ever: garbage in, garbage out.

If your AI tools are working with outdated or incomplete records, you risk generating off-base recommendations and wasting even more budget on mistargeted efforts.

In the age of AI, there’s nothing more mission-critical than data. Explore the providers offering B2B data enrichment and hygiene in the latest edition of this MarTech Intelligence Report.

Click here to download!

Dirty data is a silent budget killer

Consider this: marketing ops teams routinely spend hours manually fixing records, researching contacts, or scrubbing lists for bounce risks. Multiply that across departments and months, and the productivity loss is staggering.

Poor data doesn’t just hurt performance — it quietly drains time, money and morale.

Get ahead of the decay

If your team is still manually cleaning records or living with 20%+ bounce rates, it’s time to rethink your data strategy. Our latest MarTech Intelligence Report offers a deep dive into top vendors, their capabilities and what to look for in a modern enrichment and hygiene platform.

Want to find out how to stop your CRM from lying to you?
Download the full report now to get expert insights, vendor comparisons, and actionable steps to future-proof your data.