Validity: Marketing Leaders Are Acting on Bad Data

AI adoption for marketing teams is growing – but confidence in the data behind it isn’t growing at the same rate. 

Validity has released its 2026 State of CRM Management report, which finds that marketing leaders are acting on bad AI recommendations amidst board pressure to adopt AI.  

The survey, which polled 500 B2B and B2C marketing professionals across the US, UK, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, found that close to 78% of C-suite and 92% of SVPs and VPs have acted on an AI recommendation they suspected was wrong due to bad underlying data. 

“Marketers have bad data, and we’ve known that for years. What’s concerning is what happens when we start giving AI permission to act on it,” Guy Hanson, VP of Customer Engagement at Validity, tells Marketing Chief.

“We’re moving very quickly from using AI as a productivity tool to letting increasingly autonomous systems make decisions on our behalf.

“Our research shows that senior leaders are feeling pressure to adopt AI even when their underlying data isn’t ready, and two-thirds of organisations have increased the number of marketing decisions delegated to autonomous AI agents over the past year.”

A marketing function under pressure

Marketing leaders are feeling the pressure. 

Nearly 60% of C-suite respondents and 52% of SVPs and VPs reported that they feel the pressure to bring in AI tools now – despite feeling that the underlying data isn’t yet ready. 

This could create further challenges for organisations' overall credibility and reputation. 

Two out of three companies are reportedly increasing the number of marketing decisions that they delegated to autonomous AI agents last year, but only 21% of marketers believe their CRM data is ‘very well prepared’ to support AI – with Validity suggesting that AI tools could act on a bad data point before a human has a chance to catch it. 

This can have “measurable” financial and reputational consequences, says Validity, with 62% of organisations reporting that they have lost revenue directly due to poor CRM data quality, while nearly a third of teams say they spend six or more hours per week fixing and reconciling data. 

Alongside this, more than two thirds of marketing leaders (67%) say that poor data has also contributed to scrapped campaigns. 

“A small error can sometimes have a surprisingly big downstream effect," Guy explains. “AI changes the equation because it can act on that error faster, more often and at a scale no human team could match.

“The same is true of bias, and when data contains historical prejudice, missing demographics or messy labelling, AI can amplify those flaws at scale. A bad data point sitting in your CRM is a problem. A bad data point becoming an automated instruction is a much bigger one.”

Improving CRM confidence

Despite this, there are ways marketers believe their confidence in CRM data for strategy, reporting and AI use cases can improve. 

According to Validity, the most commonly cited drivers of improved confidence included continuous, automated monitoring that can catch and fix issues in real time (39.4%), a single, unified platform (25.4%) and third-party data validation or enrichment (16.9%).  

“Data quality and governance are no longer just operational concerns for a CRM team. This challenge needs to move much further up the executive agenda," Guy concludes.

“That starts with treating monitoring as continuous, not a once-a-quarter clean-up job, with checks and controls built into the entire architecture from the beginning, rather than added as an afterthought.

“Marketers told us themselves that ongoing, automated checks are what would rebuild their confidence, not another platform, not more tooling bolted on.

“If leaders want the upside of autonomous AI, they need to invest in making sure the data feeding it can be trusted in real time, not just at the moment someone happens to look.”

Who are Validity’s key clients?

• Copeland: Validity has supported Copeland’s plan to make its workflow simpler by bringing everything into one platform after juggling marketing campaigns between two tools. The customisation Validity brought in meant the team didn’t have to learn a new tool for building emails during or after the migration, saving at least a week to learn a new tool with minimal interruptions.
• Binance: As one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Binance relies on the email channel to engage and educate their audience. The company partnered with Validity to develop inbox placement insights by mailbox provider and sender reputation and infrastructure monitoring capabilities.
• Southwest Airlines: As a major airline, Southwest relies on email as one of its channels to engage with current and prospective customers. The company works with Validity to significantly consolidate its marketing tech stack for design testing and deliverability monitoring.
• Air France: Air France relies on its email programme to communicate essential information and drive revenue. However, reaching almost 200 destinations worldwide comes with deliverability challenges. The company used Validity Sender Certification to ensure its messages reach the inbox, enhanced its Sender Score across global markets and partnered with Validity’s team for guidance to achieve its goals.