Do lists make up an important part of your lead generation strategy and are they an integral part of your lead pipeline? If the answer is no, then the rest of this post isn’t going to be all that useful but if it is yes, then read on! This is the question we have been asking a number of our customers and prospects while talking to them not just because it helps us know if what we do can be helpful for them but also helps reflect on how you build or source those lists if they are important to you. 

Though even in cases where inbound leads are the staple, every now and then as a marketer you come across a need for a specific set of decision makers or contacts within a target set of accounts that you feel has potential and you would like to try reach out to them. Thats when building custom lists help supplement your lead requirements. While some companies do lay a lot of emphasis on building high quality lists for their campaigns by leveraging their inside sales teams others don’t really regard list quality as an important factor since they can be qualified at a later stage. They look at building volume lists with as many contacts as possible and then going through the long process of qualifying them and identifying the good ones. If contact lists are an important part of your lead strategy then the focus has to be on quality and not quantity. You want to add the best possible list of contacts at well qualified target accounts to your CRM and work towards nurturing those to qualified opportunities rather than looking to fill it with random contacts. Using custom built role based lists is far more effective as a long term strategy to building a better internal company marketing database than purchasing ready title based lists though you may get a lot more in terms of volume for the latter at the same price band. 

Customers sometimes have a need for a custom list just as a small one time requirement to experiment with an email reachout or one off direct mail campaign but feel that you need to have a larger minimum requirement or solutions like those we have at ReadyContacts need a bigger committment which isn’t true. There isn’t really a requirement that is too small or too large when it comes to an on demand custom list building effort. Its something you can order as per your requirement and as and when you need it which is what differentiates it from having a long term committment with a lead generation services provider with a minimum committment. The need for marketing data is not completely consistant at different times of the month or year so why should the supply be?

When lists are an important part of your lead mix, give it the attention it should get and it will pay off! 

In these economic down times when cost cutting is the mantra the positive effect is that it forces you to think out of the box and come up with alternative solutions to ensure you get the most out of your marketing and lead generation dollars. After having discussed this with a number of marketers and bloggers who have debated how will the recession affect lead generation budgets, there are a few things that most of us would agree on:

• Overall spend on online marketing is still likely to rise
• Budgets on offline advertising like television, newspapers, magazines will take more of a hit
• Measurability of results and being able to show clear results on every dollar spent will be important. You need to be able to link spend to what you get back for it clearly in these times.
• There is going to be pressure to generate more leads and more qualified leads during these times and since budgets wont increase, marketers will be driven to do more with less 

Even though I’ve read that surveys conducted this year have shown more than 70% of marketers will shift a large part of their spend to online marketing other surveys have shown that there is no drop in the use of direct mail marketing as a b2b lead generation tactic. Direct mail still has its advantages and can still deliver the desired response rates to b2b marketers. When it succeeds its normally attributed to the content, the layout, the message or a crafty response mechanism. When it fails the fingers tend to point towards the same areas. There is however one other factor which can directly influence the success or failure of a direct mail marketing campaign. The direct marketing list.

Even the most ingenious copy or content for a direct marketing list can yield no results if its directed towards a poor list of recipients. Role based contact lists offer a better foundation for direct mail campaigns. For starters, you know your mailer is directed towards someone within the right role or capacity to act on it. Contact details like names and job titles can be verified again ensuring that you address the prospect right. Most importantly locations and postal addresses can be confirmed so that your mail gets to the right place and the right person. We have seen role based contact lists churn out much better results on campaigns like this and it makes a lot of sense especially if your printed material is expensive and you don’t want it to end up at the wrong location or sitting among unclaimed mail.

If you already have an internal list or purchased list of contacts and you’re still unsure about the quality of the list run it through a list verification process especially to confirm location and address of your prospect which is one of the most critical factors to more opens and reads. In the end you need to know that you have done everything within your capacity to make sure the mail reaches the right person. The rest may not be within direct control but rest assured, you’ve done your bit!

Telemarketing campaigns are an inherent part of B2B sales and despite some of the difficulties associated with it, it remains one of the most important tools for sales and lead generation for companies everywhere. An effectively executed telemarketing campaign always starts off with an effectively build business contact lists. You’ll often find companies tweaking their sales pitches, adjusting their opening lines, working out objection handling, timing their calling hours and running analytics on results but the target list used was randomly put together from a bunch of different sources or downloaded from an online business contacts database which may not have been ideal for their telemarketing campaign.

An ideal list of contacts for telemarketers should:

• Have the names of direct decision makers to save the sales persons time and connect to the right person
• Contacts that have been identified by roles, not title so the sales person need not spend time finding out if they are talking to the right person
• Should have a direct extension or one-hop number to avoid having to pass through gatekeepers on every attempt to reach the contact
• An email address at hand should it be better to contact the decision maker via email before or after a call
• An alternate contact in a similar capacity should the primary contact be unreachable over a number of attempts
• Any additional information at hand either about the contact or the company which could be useful to know before actually speaking to them

Whether you use a business contacts and sales list building service or build your own customized database remembering these few essential requirements during the list building process will go a long way in making your telemarketing campaign more effective.

Do you sell into companies which are are Salesforce.com customers? If the answer is yes then I can relate to your need to build a database of very specific contacts who are directly responsible for managing Salesforce.com for their companies in order to get any traction with sales and marketing campaigns. While the higher level Vice President of Marketing or Vice President of Sales are usually the final decision makers for salesforce.com application add ons and related products, the sales operations or SFDC manager is the person who often makes a great point of contact to start selling. It is this contact which is a perfect example of some of the valuable role-based contact discovery we have done here at Ready Contacts.

While building a target list for companies who sell into Salesforce.com companies there are two universal questions they need to know about each account they plan on selling into:

• Does this company use salesforce.com as their CRM?
• If yes, who is the person directly responsible for salesforce.com operations and managing the use of SFDC within this company?

While in some companies Salesforce.com is directly overseen by a VP, Marketing in others it can managed by a Sales Operations Director, CRM Manager, Salesforce.com Manager, Marketing Manager or others based on the structure of the company. In certain cases this person could also be within the IT department and directly oversee Salesforce administration and day to day operations related to the CRM. Knowing who is the best person within the organization to speak to discuss Salesforce.com related requirements is essential to approach these accounts and locating these contacts and building your lead database can be a time consuming task but should be worth your effort. A consistent effort of navigating marketing departments at target accounts and qualifying them to understand whether they use Salesforce.com will help build a steady pipeline of leads and then talking to folks within marketing and sales will really help you determine who to sell to within the organization and give you that dependable database on which you can build an effective sales effort. So if you sell into Salesforce.com customers focus on building a great list. The rest will follow.

Conference lists and relying on them completely as your source of leads is a thing of the past. Buying conference lists as target lists for running campaigns is always an option but its not always everything its cut out to be. Some of the drawbacks of conference lists are:

• They are a list of potential prospects who attended a conference and not a list of your own ideal target accounts
• The attendees list of a conference may or may not be the best point of contact for your campaign and although they may be generally relevant to your campaign the key decision maker for your product or service may be in another role
• While if the conference list is very recent most of the data including contact details should be fresh and accurate but dated conference lists sold well after the actual event can have outdated data and may not be as effective in the campaigns
• Unless every company or attendee at that conference is a potential target for your business there is a good chance you will end up paying for data that you don’t need in the form of accounts or attendees that are not relevant to your campaigns
• The right conferences don’t always happen according to your sales plan and targets so relying on them completely for your lists may not be the best sources to depend on

Developing custom B2B lead lists can involve more work but can be highly effective since they overcome the drawbacks of traditional conference lists. With on demand lead list building services like ReadyContacts.com the process can easily be outsourced for a price thats well worth the ROI and provide better value than traditional conference lists. So the next time you find yourself waiting for the next conference to happen so you can find new contacts to fill up the lead funnel, try a customized list building effort and you may be pleasantly surprised.