Data hygiene is the practice of keeping marketing and CRM data accurate, complete, consistent, and free of duplicates. Poor data hygiene undermines reporting, attribution, and targeting, because every analysis built on unreliable data produces unreliable conclusions.

Data hygiene is unglamorous and it determines whether any of your reporting means anything. Duplicate records, inconsistent fields, and missing sources quietly corrupt every number you use to make decisions. Before investing in better analytics or attribution, it is worth checking whether the underlying data is clean enough to support either.

Example:

Duplicate records inflate lead counts and split a single account's history across several entries, making both reporting and attribution unreliable.

Why does data hygiene matter for marketing?

Reporting, attribution, and targeting all depend on accurate data. Unreliable underlying data produces unreliable conclusions regardless of the tools used.

What are common data hygiene problems?

Duplicate records, inconsistent field values, missing source data, and outdated contact information, all of which distort analysis.