But it's not just each lead that is the problem. If the CRM system doesn't archive records but simply overwrites them when changes are made to a lead, valuable information will be lost. For instance, e-signature company (which was recently acquired by Adobe) discovered an interesting pattern in lead-nurturing emails.

When you sign up for a free EchoSign account, you will receive three nurturing emails. The first will thank you for signing up, while the next two will offer usage tips. Of course, within each email users are given links to premium, paid services.

As with most email campaigns, the first email generates the most clickthroughs. Click rates drop with each subsequent email -- but only to a point. "I decided to test another series of emails a month out after users hadn't heard from us in a while," Loretta Jones, EchoSign's head of marketing says. The results surprised her. The first email sent a month later generated better results than all but the initial welcome email.

If in her recordkeeping, Jones simply updated each record, overwriting the results from the first series of emails, this pattern would have never emerged. However, patterns like this require storing lots and lots of data. Basically, you trade a lack of visibility for Big Data woes.