Average B2B Contact Data Decay Rate in 2025

B2B contact data never stays the same. People switch jobs, companies change their names, old domains disappear, and inboxes get left behind. Studies throughout 2025 regularly point to the same problem. If you are not consistently updating your B2B contacts, you lose a large share of accuracy every year.

TL;DR

• Recent research puts the average B2B contact data decay rate around 25% per year, with credible ranges from roughly 22% to 30%, and some high-turnover segments reaching 70% annual change.

• That means if you start with 10,000 contacts today, only about 7,500 of those contacts will still be accurate next year if you do nothing to refresh them.

• Decay shows up as higher bounce rates, lower open and reply rates, more calls to inactive numbers, and wasted sales time spent on contacts who have moved on or no longer exist.

What a 25% Decay Rate Means in Practice

A 25% annual decay rate means roughly one out of every four records in your CRM will become inaccurate within a year if you never update it. Research from several data providers shows that email lists and contact databases usually lose around 22 to 30% of their accuracy every year.

Put simply, if you start with 10,000 contacts, you will end up with around 7,500 usable contacts after a year if you do nothing to maintain the list. If the same rate of decay keeps going, you are looking at roughly 5,600 usable contacts after two years.

Some recent research shows monthly decay of about 2 to 3%, which matches the idea of a 25% yearly drop once you factor in compounding.

For planning purposes, most teams can treat 25% per year as a realistic starting point and then make adjustments once they see what their own data looks like.

Why B2B Contact Data Decays So Fast

B2B data decays faster than most people expect. Studies in 2024 and 2025 highlight a few key reasons:

• Job changes. About 20 to 25% of employees change jobs each year, and in sales and tech roles the turnover rate can climb to 30% or higher.

• Company changes. Mergers, acquisitions, and restructures change domains, titles, locations, and reporting lines. A report by Forrester says most companies go through some kind of restructuring in a typical year.

• Channel changes. Email addresses decay at about 20 to 30% per year, phone numbers decay at around 18 to 25%, and mailing addresses change as well.

• Opt outs and inactivity. People unsubscribe, mark emails as spam, or just stop engaging, which essentially takes them out of your usable contact list.

When you put these factors together, several sources say that in some B2B segments more than half of the contact data changes within a year, and some high churn databases see figures as high as 70 to 73%.

That is why a list that was accurate last year can suddenly have a lot of bounces even if you never touched it.

How Data Decay Shows Up in Your Metrics

The following are 4 of the many ways you may see data decay show up in your metrics:

1. Rising bounce rates and spam risk
As contacts move or domains get shut down, more emails fail to deliver. This is one reason the average B2B cold email bounce rate sits around 7.5%. Bad data does more than waste sends. It also damages your sender reputation with mailbox providers.

2. Lower opens and replies
Contacts who no longer match the right role, company size, or industry may still get your emails but are no longer a good fit. Over time this pushes down open and reply rates even if your messaging and targeting stay the same.

3. Bad phone dials and missed meetings
Phone data can decay as well. One report says phone numbers change at about 18% per year, and other sources note that B2B phone data can decay even faster.

4. Wasted time and hidden costs
Several studies link bad contact data to real business losses. One analysis estimates that poor data can cost companies millions each year and take up a quarter or more of a sales team’s time as they chase wrong or incomplete records. You can also use our calculator to calculate the effect of bad data using your own values.

If your bounce, open, or connect rates are dropping even though your strategy has stayed the same, there is a good chance data decay is playing a role.

How to Estimate Your Own Data Decay Rate

Industry averages are helpful, but the most accurate benchmark comes from your own database. You can build a simple estimate with just a few steps.:

1. Pick a stable segment. For example, take all the contacts that matched a certain filter on the same date one year ago.

2. Check how many are still valid. Count how many of those records still have a working email, the right company, and the right role today.

3. Calculate the drop. If you started with 5,000 contacts and now have about 3,800 that still look accurate, your decay rate for that group comes out to roughly 24%.

4. Repeat for a few groups. Look at different industries, seniority levels, or regions. Some will decay much faster than others.

You can also track decay in an indirect way by watching the share of hard bounces, the number of replies that say something like “moved on”, and contacts you end up updating because their role or company changed.

Comparing your numbers to the 25% baseline will show you whether your audience is more stable or more volatile than a typical B2B dataset.

FAQ

Why do some sources say B2B data decays up to 70% per year?

High figures like 73% usually refer to combined changes in certain B2B databases, including role shifts, job changes, and opt-outs in fast moving industries. These numbers are real, but they mostly describe the most active parts of the market.

For planning general campaigns, using about 25% per year is a more practical baseline for most teams. You can raise that number for high turnover segments once you have your own data.

How is data decay different from email bounce rate?

Data decay is the slow drop in accuracy of your contact records over time. Bounce rate is one visible sign of that decay in your email channel. When someone changes jobs or leaves a company, their email may start to hard bounce, but decay also affects phone numbers, titles, locations, and segments in ways that do not always show up as bounces. If you focus only on bounce rate, you will miss a large part of the change happening in your data.

How often should I clean my lists if I am buying external B2B data?

If you rely on external lists, make sure you clean or re verify them before any major campaign. Plan on refreshing them at least once a quarter for segments you use all the time. If you work in a high churn industry or you send a lot of cold emails, monthly checks can make a big difference. Using a provider that delivers fresh, human-verified data reduces the amount of work you need to do on your own and keeps you ahead of the decay curve.