Data Quality Depends on User Consent

Marketing data is only as useful as it is accurate, and accuracy depends on something most data quality programs ignore: whether the people giving you the data trust you enough to tell the truth. Data quality depends on user consent, and the connection is more direct than most marketers assume.

Bad data produces bad campaigns

Picture a company planning a birthday campaign that offers an age-appropriate discount on a set list of games. Its database records every unknown birthdate as January 1, 1970.¹ Or picture a company sending product recommendations based on purchase data that is five to seven years old. Both campaigns are built on data that looks complete but isn't, and both will send the wrong offer to many people.

Clean, current data supports better decisions, more relevant messages, and less waste. Dirty data costs money, from campaigns aimed at the wrong audience to decisions made on numbers that were never true.

People lie to companies they don't trust

People who understand what data you are asking for, why you want it, and what you will do with it are more likely to give you accurate answers. People who don't often won't. In 2015, Marketing Week reported that 60% of consumers intentionally gave companies false information, mostly to protect their privacy.²

If consumers are deliberately dirtying your database to protect themselves, the fix is to give them less reason to lie. That starts with data minimization: collect what you need and nothing more, and drop the fields you're collecting "just in case we need it one day." Some laws require that discipline already. Canada's PIPEDA, for one, limits collection to what is necessary for the purposes the organization has identified.³ A person who says, "This is what we need, and this is why we need it," is more likely to tell you the truth, and regulators are happier too.

Consent and data quality pull in the same direction

Data quality and consent are usually treated as competing priorities, as though every privacy protection costs the marketing team some accuracy. In practice, they reinforce each other. People who trust how their data will be handled give you more complete and more accurate information. People who don't give you January 1, 1970.

Marketers who ask for less, explain why, and honor what people tell them end up with smaller, more accurate databases. That is a better trade than a large database full of fiction.