There is no perfection, only beautiful versions of brokenness.
― Shannon L. Alder
B2B marketers who rent prospect names have a funny idea about accuracy.
They expect perfection.
A team of direct marketing experts sampled the offerings of five large suppliers of prospect names and verified the samples' accuracy by phoning the prospects.
They found the data offered imperfect. Suppliers' data-accuracy ranged from a low of 93% to a high of 98%, as the chart below shows:
Why anyone who routinely accepts less-than-perfection from a spouse, a quarterback, a physician or a priest expects perfection from a data supplier is beyond me.
If you do, my advice is twofold: get real; and get a list broker. Brokers know which suppliers offer decently accurate prospect data―and which don't.
And don't expect perfection.
