Measuring cost per recovered opportunity
Recovery programs are easy to justify with anecdotes and hard to justify without a number. There is one that settles it.
The calculation
Take the total cost of the recovery program over a period — software plus usage — and divide it by the number of qualified conversations delivered to your sales team. That is your cost per recovered opportunity. Compare it directly with your blended cost per qualified conversation from paid lead sources.
Run it as a controlled batch
Do not start with the whole database. Take a defined batch of aged records, run it for a fixed window, and hold everything else constant. A controlled batch produces a number you can defend and repeat.
Count the second-order value
Recovered records also produce updated contact data, corrected disqualifications and future-dated opportunities with a known trigger. These do not show up in month one but change the value of the database permanently.
If a recovered conversation costs less than a purchased one, the only rational decision is to work the database before buying more of it.