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We’re all busy. But how busy are we… really? Are we moving things forward on a daily basis, or just going through the motions? With almost a year of various levels of lockdown behind us, perhaps we need a little novocaine for the soul to get us through and keep moving forward!
Give this song a listen with me as we discuss takeaways from the past week:
Increasing Data Quality
It feels like I’ve been talking to clients about data A LOT lately – intent data, data quality, data sourcing. The discussion always ends up coming back to that old computing adage, ‘garbage in, garbage out’ – and it’s as applicable now as it has ever been! So I spent some time looking at my favourite sources for research around data to discuss this week.
B2B data decays rapidly. I’ve pulled some stats from various sources – based on these, it’s no wonder companies struggle to keep their data clean!
- 40% of email addresses change at least once every two years
- 18% of telephone numbers change every year
- 21% of CEOs change every year
- 25-33% of email addresses become outdated every year
And I’m sure these numbers have increased due to COVID! According to ZoomInfo, there are some things you can do to address bad data:
- Audit your database
- Improve your data collection methods
- Automate data maintenance
The HubSpot data, as well as reports such as this one from Dun & Bradstreet, show that marketers have increased investment in the quality of their data and are placing much more emphasis on data quality to improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
How are you improving data quality? Is it top of mind for your organization, or is your data quality costing you more than you realize?
Recorded Music Did Well Last Year
COVID didn’t keep the recorded music industry down last year, as revenue was up 9% to around $12 billion. That’s the 5th straight year of growth for the industry! According to the latest year-end report by the RIAA for 2020, streaming accounted for 83% of the total or a little more than $10 billion.
Paid subscriptions to on-demand streaming services are at the heart of the streaming revenue increase, and these subs grew by 14.6% up to $7 billion. Many wonder whether streaming subscriptions have hit the saturation point, but that’s not indicated in the numbers.
How does this impact B2B? Streaming services have a lot in common with B2B SaaS solutions. I think we can learn a lot by watching B2C tech and the trends in their marketing strategies and performance. Are there lessons learned that you can apply to your B2B solution? Perhaps it’s a tweak to your pricing model or a change in your market positioning.
No matter what, based on these results, it seems that there is no chance of them ‘sputtering out’ anytime soon!
Are You Ready for ABM?
Free Forrester Report Our friends at Forrester are joining us for another webinar – “Are You Ready for B2B Account-Based Marketing?” Learn how to create your own ABM Success in 2021 – sign up and we’ll send you their research report too!
As always, if I can help you out, let me know! Don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.
Looking forward,
Rick
Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat