It’s become a marketing and business mantra–first party data is essential, and list quality is key.

Yet, the reality is that many lists today that marketers test to help build prospect and customer pools are mediocre. Others are outright garbage.

As I was writing this, the results of The Rebooting survey results of how media product leaders are doing more with less were released. The findings were that “audience engagement is the top product and technology priority for media organizations in 2025… In our survey, audience engagement was named the top priority more than twice as often as the next most common answer (AI integration).”

That emphasis on engagement brings us right back to data. Audience engagement and the health of your database are inseparable. 

In conversations with colleagues from several telemarketing firms about declining responses I have seen in a variety of industries, they told me they have seen similar results for new subscriber acquisition efforts.  Lists that have historically worked are having lower conversion rates than usual.

Why the decline?  Contributing reasons might be post- COVID fatigue–a lull after a flurry of list clean up when online engagement and webinars were critical for organizations.  

Other reasons that can impact refreshing lists:

• Overmarketing to email lists.
• Changing algorithms/processes for emails making it to the recipients’ in-box.
• Declining magazine audit bureau membership, which has reduced incentive to maintain recency/sources on lists, other than for the USPS.
• Downsizing and the economic pressures.
• Dropping engagement from content like webinars and content downloads.
• Time, money, lack of resources.

I expect this trend to continue. With continued use of AI generated data, bigger lists with little quality testing are likely already in the marketplace.

Clean data can help you focus your efforts, decrease overmarketing, create new products, and increase revenue.

There are many ways that you can keep your own database current.  These will be explored in part 2 of this post.

The journey continues. Cindy