It’s January. You’ve had two weeks off. Your email outbox is waiting. Your Q1 campaign is ready to fire. But your database… isn’t. What’s changed while you were away isn’t minor decay. It’s fundamental change. Here’s what you need to know.
1) Your contact data decays constantly
A B2B database doesn’t sit still. People move jobs, change roles, update email addresses, switch phone numbers. Data becomes stale faster than most teams expect.
Key numbers:
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Up to 70.3% of B2B contact data can be outdated in 12 months. Without constant refresh it’s not a static asset. It erodes.
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Typical decay sits around 22–30% per year for core fields like emails and CRM records.
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Email addresses alone change 23–30% annually.
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Phone numbers change around 18–43% annually, depending on industry.
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Studies show 70% of CRM data is inaccurate or out of date.
In practical terms, if you had 100,000 contacts in January 2025, tens of thousands of them are no longer accurate today.
Job moves accelerate over year end
December and January are high churn months for roles, even if hiring slows.
What typically happens:
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People leave roles before year end
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Promotions and restructures land in January
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Budget ownership shifts at the start of the financial year
Studies show that close to a third of professionals change jobs each year. Many more change role, title or responsibility without leaving the business.
For event marketing, this is critical. Your audience is defined by role. If that role has changed, your targeting is wrong.
Company data shifts too, not just people
It’s not only contacts that change.
Over the break:
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Mergers and acquisitions complete
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Companies rebrand or consolidate
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Email domains and locations update
If your firmographic data is static, your segmentation logic starts to fail. You think you are targeting the right organisations. In reality, parts of your list no longer reflect how those businesses operate.
What this does to your Q1 campaigns
The impact shows up fast once you press send.
You’ll see:
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Higher bounce rates and lower deliverability
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Reduced engagement from misaligned roles
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Less reliable reporting and attribution
Personalisation suffers first. Then performance. Then confidence in the data.
This is why January campaigns often underperform expectations, even when messaging and offers are strong.
The hidden productivity cost
Poor data quality does not just affect results. It wastes time.
Research shows sales and marketing teams lose hundreds of hours each year chasing inaccurate records. In Q1, that waste is amplified. Teams are pushing for momentum but working against bad inputs.
Your database should make campaigns easier to run. When it degrades, everything takes more effort for less return.
Why this matters now, not later
Data does not correct itself after the break.
If you are not actively validating, enriching and replenishing your database:
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Old contacts remain active
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New decision makers stay invisible
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Segments drift further from reality
The longer you leave it, the harder Q1 has to work to recover lost ground.
Before you launch your first campaign of the year, ask yourself one question.
If a key contact changed role in December, would your database reflect it today?
If not, your database has changed more than you think. For a full consultation on how to start the year with a strong, cleansed, and rebuilt database, get in touch with us today.
