Although the company’s internal marketing or lead database and inbound leads is the best place to start looking while building out targeted email lists for upcoming campaigns, there is a constant need to replenish these databases with new email lists and fresh leads. Inbound leads aside, whether you are looking to build target list on the basis of geography, industry, company size or any other segmentation, there are a number of different sources out there offering business contacts with email addresses. While each of them work on varied models and range from a few cents per contact to several dollars a contact, it’s important to read between the lines and understand the underlying value proposition of each source while deciding on which one will work best for you. For example a custom target list building service service such as ReadyContacts or Reachforce offers a different value proposition in terms of highly customized role-based lists built fresh as per your specific needs versus subscribing to Hoovers or OneSource which gives you a very large number of existing high level decision makers and executives in a company. Both types of sources can help you build a target list for email marketing however they are quite different in the value they provide so it’s best to really evaluate how each source works and narrow down on what would be most effective for your company and campaigns.
Here are some sources you can refer to if you are out looking to build or acquire a new b2b target email list:
These are just some of the resources you can evaluate when you need to build a fresh business to business email list. Remember to carefully evaluate what you’re getting in terms of value from each of these and select the one that is optimum. Are there any other resources you’ve tried out or any experiences you can share on this?
As a B2B lead data company we take marketing and business contacts databases very seriously and and lay a lot of stress on keeping them in shape, updated and periodically cleansed. Yet, when you put things across in the perspective that Jon Miller did in his recent blog post on the Marketo Blog titled “Unleash Your House Database with Lead Nurturing” it makes you step back and really think about how valuable your marketing database is. The part of the post I am refering to is the same one Jason Stewart talks about on his Demandblog post “Your Biggest Untapped Marketing Asset?“
That database is a significant asset that gets undervalued at most companies. Think about it: if your average cost per new contact is even just $20 (a low assumption) and you have a modest database of 250,000 contacts, then your house database is a $5 million asset. Do you treat it as such? How many other assets of that size do you have in your company? How much revenue does that asset generate for your business?
The question that caught my attention was “do you treat it as such?”. Companies can be generous in spending on acquiring new business contacts and new leads. You can have a sizable budget set aside to run new lead generation campaigns, buy contact lists, subscribe to business contacts databases and so on. What about the existing databases of business contacts already in the database? How much goes into removing expired data and making sure the value of your existing database doesn’t deteriorate?
If you consider a 250,000 contact database valued at $5 million and also consider every year anywhere from 20% – 50% of that data could go bad or become invalid it would mean a minimum loss of $1 million. That is a considerable loss! How much would you invest to keep that database in shape and are you currently giving it the attention it needs?
It’s something to think about!
When it comes to sources of business contacts as leads there are a number of different options. They are among the most valuable commodities in business to business sales and marketing and when you’re out shopping for them, you’ll notice they come in different packages.
Pay once for unlimited use – This is the kind of pricing model which needs a one time upfront investment usually in the form of a subscription fee or purchase amount which gives you a years access or an export file of a fairly high volume of business contacts you can use as and when you need to use those business contacts.
Pros
- You pay one time and have access to those contacts whenever you have a need
- They are usually larger databases with more contacts which could be suited to those who need volume over focus
- Considering the volume of contacts and data you have access to the cost per contact is much lower and your investment is spread across a larger number of contacts
- You pay or make your investment in advance and if you don’t make much use of your access to these contacts, your cost remains the same which means you might end up wasting your investment.
- You may be paying for what you dont need. For example if you spent $10,000 to a database subscription which gives you access to 10,000 contacts of which only 1000 of those contacts are relevant to your marketing and sales needs, you have effectively paid $10 per contact and not $1 as you may have believed.
- If you need very specific business contacts and some amount of customization over volume and more general contacts, then this model is not very suitable as you are paying a fixed price for an ‘off the shelf’ bundled set of contacts.
- You dont get a say in selecting your target accounts or business contacts so the chances of duplication with your existing database and redundancy is always there.
- You get to select the contacts or the type of contacts that you suit your requirements so you are effectively getting more qualified business contacts which you know will be useful
- You pay only for what you need to consume so there is very little wastage and the costs are controlled
- There is clearer ROI and the effectiveness is more easily measurable when contacts are selected and used per camapign or per use.
- You have more flexibility with your budget and don’t need to block your entire budget by spending it in advance. With the pay per use model, if you are not happy with a particular source, you can move on to another unlike a one time payment where you can be stuck with something thats not working for you.
- The cost per contact can be higher with this model as its spread across fewer contacts or depending on the volumes you require. This is specially true for customized list building.
- You may not have instant access to contacts like you may have with a database subscription unless you can forcast your requirement a little in advance and select your contacts just before you need them.
Lead lists and business contact data are an integral need of almost every marketer or sales person in some form or the other. Whether you need to build a list of target customers or you simply need to locate one decision maker within your target account along with contact details, here are some sources you should take a look at to find what you need:
Hoovers Online – Online Business Information Directory (Subscription based)
OneSource – Global Business Information Source (Subscription based)
ReadyContacts – B2B Custom Role Based Business Contacts List Building (Pay per contact delivered)
Jigsaw.com – Directory Of Companies and Business Professionals (Pay by points system or purchase exported lists)
Spoke – Business Networking Site (Business networking model)
Linkedin - Business Professionals Network (Business networking model)
iProfile – Global IT Business Intelligence (Subscription model)
ActiveContacts – Vertical Based Deep Rooted Business Contacts Databases (Subscription based)
Zoominfo - Directory of People and Companies (Subscription based)
Demandbase – Marketing List Building & Purchase Business Contacts (Pay per use model)
These are just 10 good sources for your lead, lists and business contacts requirements. Does anyone have more they could add to this list which could be useful?
Every book on business and best practices emphasizes why you should buy only as much as you need and when you need it. Overstocking anything in large quantities much before you are ready to use or process it is a cardinal sin in manufacturing or production practices. No one would dream of splurging budget in advance on piling up stock, most of which will not even end up being used. Then why do it with purchasing business contacts lists for sales or marketing campaigns?
I recently read a great post by Brandon Hull of SalesTeamTools.com titled “Sales Leads: Why Buy 5,000 When You Only Need 50?” which simply resonates the point we drive to our customers as well as other marketers. Build more focussed lists of business contacts that you need and ‘pay as you go’ so that you are not paying for what you dont need or dont need at this point of time.
Here are some reasons why it makes sense to take only as much as you need:
- Spending thousands of dollars on an annual subscription to a large database like which have millions of contacts when you may use a few hundred contacts through the year would be paying for something you dont need.
- Investing a sizeable portion of your budget on a large database subscription in advance means you are blocking a part of your budget and you have incurred a cost well before you need to.
- Business contact data is perishable and has a shelf life. Purchasing a large list well before you are ready to run your campaign will be a waste with data going bad while its waiting and will need to be cleansed before its ready to use again.
- Smaller customized lists tailored for your campaign and has only those contacts you need will help you measure your ROI a lot more clearly and give you better results for your spend.
- By paying for only as many contacts as you need you can control your costs and stretch your lead generation dollars much further by controling waste
- You break away from the bad habbit of trying to pitch to every company out there whether qualified or not just because you have their contact information and start making your campaigns more focussed by acquiring contacts only within accounts that you feel are qualified.
Everyone who is visiting your website is atleast somewhat interesting in your products and services or something within the domain. Most traditional analytics solution give you just a purely digital description of web traffic. That is helpful but not actionable, atleast for B2B marketers. Most B2B marketers want to know WHO it was who visited the website and if she is coming back again, and how many times and what is she looking at. That is actionable information and now there is a superb tool available for anyone who wants to do this, for FREE. Its the newly launched Demandbase Stream solution that has a slick interface for keeping you and your team abreast of WHO is coming to your website. I would highly recommend using a data cleansing and lead qualification process to whet the leads before calling them “actionable” from a sales perspective. Give it a swirl and post your comments here.
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