What Percentage of Small Business Contacts Remain Valid After 12 Months? | InfoGlobalData

There is currently no comparable, high-authority 2026 study from ZeroBounce or the U.S. Census Bureau that isolates email-address validity decay specifically for small-business contacts.

Therefore, claiming that exactly 23% of a Small Businesses Mailing List becomes invalid after 12 months would overstate the evidence.

Instead, 23% is best used as a general B2B email-decay benchmark against which organizations can measure their own SMB contact data.

Why Small-Business Contact Data Changes So Quickly

Small-business databases face several independent sources of change.

1. People change jobs and responsibilities

Professional email addresses frequently depend on employment. When an employee leaves a company, the associated mailbox may eventually stop accepting messages.

This is particularly relevant for B2B prospecting because a record can become commercially inaccurate before the email address itself becomes technically invalid.

For example, a contact might still receive email at a company but no longer control purchasing decisions. A technically deliverable record can therefore still be functionally outdated.

2. Businesses open, close, and restructure

The U.S. Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics tracks establishment births and deaths, firm startups and shutdowns, and job creation and destruction. Its latest published BDS dataset covers data through 2023 and provides measures by firm and establishment size. (Census.gov)