If you've ever spent hours chasing what looked like a hot lead, only to find the email bounced, the name was spelt wrong, or, worse, it was already sitting in your CRM under a duplicate record, then we totally empathise!
Back in our earlier marketing days, this problem used to cause us some serious computer rage and often resulted in the use of a few choice expletives. Until we learned how to keep our email lists clean and tidy.
Bad email data is one of the biggest silent killers of CRM performance. It clogs up your lists, skews your reporting, and wastes valuable sales and marketing time. And yet, it’s rarely top of the priority list when businesses talk about “improving their CRM.”
This is a big missed opportunity for email managers, as cleaning up your email data is one of the fastest, simplest ways to boost deliverability, improve targeting, and help your CRM work the way it was meant to.
What bad email is costing you...
Research on data quality for businesses has shown the rather startling impact that poor email and CRM data can have, not only on your profits, but also on your brand. Finding that:
- Bad data negatively affects the bottom line of 88% of companies, and can result in a revenue loss of 12% or higher!
- Bad data caused 28% of companies to suffer worse customer service, with 21% of companies experiencing reputational damage.
So with this in mind, we felt that it's important to highlight the issue of poor data hygiene, and show you why clean email data is so powerful and how to keep yours in top shape.
What do we mean by ‘clean’ email data?
Essentially, as the phrase suggests, clean email is about making sure every contact in your CRM is accurate, valid, and up to date. In addition to the obvious, like avoiding typos or fake addresses, that means:
- The email address actually works (no hard bounces).
- It belongs to the right person (not someone who left the company three years ago).
- It’s correctly formatted and tagged, so it appears in the right lists and segments.
The problem is that email data naturally decays over time. People change jobs, switch email providers, or unsubscribe from newsletters, especially in B2B, where staff turnover can be high.
In fact, studies suggest that around 22% of B2B email addresses go stale every year, which means that even the cleanest list today could be riddled with bad data in six months.
Keeping your email data clean is an ongoing process, and not a “do it once and forget it” job. It’s definitely not the most fun aspect of marketing, but it needs to be an essential admin task if you want your CRM to deliver reliable insights and better campaign results.
5 ways dirty email data wrecks your CRM
Bad email data can become a lot more than a technical annoyance, when it quietly starts eating away at your marketing and sales results. The main ways in which it damages your CRM are:
1. High bounce rates ruin deliverability
Too many invalid addresses > too many hard bounces. Email providers notice, and before you know it, your perfectly good emails are getting dumped in spam folders.
2. Duplicate records confuse your team
Nothing slows sales down like two reps chasing the same lead, or worse, sending them two slightly different emails on the same day. It’s messy and makes you look unprofessional.
3. Poor segmentation = bad targeting
If your CRM is full of outdated or incomplete data, you can’t segment properly. That means people get lumped into the wrong lists, receiving irrelevant emails they’ll ignore -or unsubscribe from.
4. Distorted reporting leads to bad decisions
Basing your marketing strategy on dirty data? Big mistake. Fake or outdated contacts inflate open and click rates in weird ways, making it harder to see what’s really working.
5. Wasted time, wasted money
Your team spends hours chasing leads that don’t exist, while your ad budget keeps retargeting people who left that company two years ago. Clean data saves time and makes every pound you spend work harder.
How clean email data transforms CRM performance
If dirty email data clogs things up, clean data does the opposite, it unlocks the real power of your CRM. This is the kind of magic that happens when you get it right:
- Better deliverability, for higher engagement
Valid, up-to-date emails mean fewer bounces and more of your messages actually landing in inboxes. More eyes on your emails gets more opens, clicks, and replies. - Accurate segmentation enables relevant messaging
When your lists are clean, you can target people properly, whether that’s personalising by industry, job title, or buying stage. Relevant emails get read, irrelevant ones get ignored. - Sales teams trust the data
When sales reps know the contact info is right, they move faster and follow up with confidence, no second-guessing whether that lead is still in the job. - Automation actually works
Workflows, nurture sequences, and lead scoring are only as good as the data you feed them. Clean data keeps automation smooth and stops leads slipping through the cracks.
How to keep your email data clean
As we've pointed out at the beginning, keeping your email data clean is a habitual activity. Luckily it usually only requires a few simple practices to make a big difference:
1. Start with good data capture
If bad data doesn’t get in, you don’t have to clean it later. Use clear opt-in forms, make fields required (where it makes sense), and consider simple validation rules to catch obvious typos.
2. Regularly verify and clean your list
People change jobs and email providers all the time. Make list cleaning a routine, whether that’s quarterly or before major campaigns. (You can do this manually or with email verification tools.)
3. Merge duplicates and keep records tidy
Deduplicate regularly so you’re not emailing the same person twice. Most CRMs have built-in tools for this, use them!
4. Segment properly, don’t just dump everyone into one list
Keep your CRM organised with clear tagging or list rules. It’s easier to spot outdated or inactive contacts when you can see who’s actually engaging.
5. Train your team to follow the same rules
Again, consistency is the name of the game here. Make sure everyone entering or updating CRM data knows how it should be done, one bad habit can undo all your hard work.
6. Automate where you can
Set up workflows to flag bounced emails, remove inactive contacts, or prompt your team to check details after a certain time. Let your CRM do the heavy lifting for you.
How Attractly keeps your email data clean
Hopefully you can now tell that effectively cleaning up email data requires making sure your whole marketing and sales process works smoothly. At Attractly, we look at the bigger picture. We help businesses:
- Set up HubSpot (or fix what’s already there) so your CRM is organised, duplicates are under control, and your automation runs on reliable data.
- Streamline lead capture and segmentation so you’re collecting better data from the start.
- Spot gaps and inefficiencies, whether that’s bloated lists, bad reporting, or workflows that are sent to the wrong people.
We'll give you clean, reliable email data that makes your CRM a genuine growth tool and not just a big, messy database.
If you’re fed up with chasing bad leads or watching your email campaigns underperform, we can help you get things back on track.
Clean data, better results
Your CRM is only as good as the data you feed it. Clean, accurate email data means better deliverability, smarter targeting, happier sales teams, and ultimately, better results from every campaign you run.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, and with the right processes (and a bit of expert help), keeping your email lists clean quickly becomes second nature.
Cleaning up data may seem laborious, but once you make it part of your routine, it’s a lot easier, and your CRM (and results) will thank you.
Want to get more from your CRM and stop wasting time on bad data? Let’s chat about how Attractly can help you clean things up and turn your CRM into the growth engine it’s meant to be.
