Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation - demandblog

Where do you get your leads and lists from?

By Jason Stewart  - July 3, 2007

Buying marketing lists and purchasing leads is painful.

Chief Marketer recently published an article by Ozgur Dogan called “Integrating New Data Sources to Grow Your Universe.” The line from the article that sticks in my head is “The plain and simple truth is that it is becoming harder to identify – and market to – only the best prospects.”

It goes on to discuss how marketers should expand the number of sources they use to compile lists or purchase leads from. Take a cue from the manufacturer who relies on a variety of sources for their raw materials, putting some diversification into their supply chain. If supplier X is temporarily out of something you can go to supplier Y – which may be a little bit pricier but at least production does not stop.

Let’s say you do subscribe to a data source or that you have one particular vendor for lists – after all, budgetary and time constraints may limit a marketer to rely on one data source. Is that one service going to fit all your needs? For example…does it have email addresses? Are they opt-in? What about specialized information, like ERP System or subscriptions to similar publications? How often do they refresh their data? If it is not a subscription, do they have minimum purchases? Are you going to be buying names you’ve already paid for? Or worse yet, are you going to buy names that are really not a fit for you just to fill that “minimum order?” When you email to those folks, that’s when you risk being labeled as a spammer.

Ultimately, B2B marketers should have a number of data sources they pull from, just as that manufacturer has numerous sources for raw materials. After all, these names and lists are the materials you start with while generating demand for your company’s goods or services, and it would be a mistake to be locked into one vendor after you have exhausted your options with them.

Back to that point about marketing to only the best prospects, though… list vendors that allow you to easily sift through their search parameters and play with filters more specific than SIC code or general department are very hard to find. As a result, your marketing campaigns are less effective because you are relying too much on “…emotions and gut feel…” rather than “…fact-based, systematic approaches that can be tested prior to implementation to yield the best results.”

You are buying names that don’t always fit your needs because you either have to (minimum purchase requirements lead you to purchase names just so you can "get your money's worth") or because you can’t avoid it (due to shoddy filters and poor database segmentation).

If you have the ability to filter through the raw data, the millions of names from reputable sources, and then break it down by the components that are truly interesting to you (department, title, level, industry and specific industry categories within a general “vertical market” and so on) to get that content you really and truly need in the quantities that fit your requirements – that is what is going to help your marketing become much more targeted and effective. Demandbase is working on a lead search engine like this, with data compiled from reputable sources that will give you better visibility into the leads you buy before you buy them.

Thinking of Harvesting E-mail Addresses?

By Kirk Crenshaw  - June 10, 2007

Harvesting E-mail Addresses? 3 Reasons to Stop.

Many marketers consider e-mail harvesting as a way to build their in house lists. Jordan Ayan, CEO of SubscriberMail gives 3 reasons to stop:

1. Harvested addresses are not opt-in.
2. You will get caught.
3. The process is not CAN-SPAM compliant.

Learn more:
Why is e-mail address harvesting a bad idea?

 

Email Marketing as an Afterthought

By Kirk Crenshaw  - May 7, 2007

Email Marketing is a Powerful Tool - Are You Allocating Enough Dedicated Resources to do it Right?

Everyone agrees that email marketing is a solid marketing tool.  It is relatively low cost, and provides an amazing ROI.  The DMA has reported that it generates over $50 for every dollar spent - Hard to say that for many other types of lead generation activities.

But, in many companies, the role of the email marketer is minimized to the point where it is just a minor function of a junior staff member.  It is seen more as a tactical vs. a strategic tool.  Today's email marketing requires more resources and expertise than many companies are willing to commit. You need to understand the latest and greatest technology, manage delivery issues, ensure email formatting is correct, segment and target your email targets effectively, ensure the right message is going to the right audience - at the right time, manage your company's online reputation, and so on...

 Loren McDonald of J.L. Halsey focused on this issue in a couple of recent articles:

• Email Marketing: Shortchanged by Resource to ROI Imbalance

"Here's the real issue. Most companies are uninformed about email-marketing best practices and suffer from a lack of in-house, expert resources. Very few companies recognize this, however, because even poorly done email still tends to perform fairly well. No harm, no foul, right?"

• Find Your Email Mojo in 5 Steps

"A poorly executed email program can reflect negatively on your brand and hurt your reputation and sales.                    

Email marketing has always been easy to do, but tough to do well. That's especially true today because email marketing requires more expertise and resources than most companies are allocating."

Should you Rent or Buy Marketing Lists?

By Chris Golec  - March 26, 2007

Quality and Credibility are Key

More and more companies are popping up that offer the opportunity to buy a marketing list versus the traditional rental model.    While there are many benefits to this option, the devil may be in the details.   We recommend customers carefully consider both options and then make the decision based on list quality, the provider's ability to segment and target their data, and the overall credibility of the provider. 

Problems with Rental

• Low quality or relevancy to target campaign – The rental model offers no way to know if your message is reaching the target audience since you never see the list.   If 50% the responses you receive from a campaign are solid prospects, you can safely assume that more than 50% the initial list was sent to the wrong audience. 
• No visibility into email results – Most providers do not validate (via a third party) how many emails were sent or delivered.   
• High rental minimums – Sending your message to 5,000 or 10,000 people (most provider's minimums) absolutely makes no sense if your target audience is much smaller.   Not only is a waste of money, but it forces you to spam professionals with a message that is meaningless. 
• Low response rates – A 1-2% response rate, or 98-99%+ lack of response rate, should be unacceptable.   A more targeted list with quality data should double or triple results and save your company countless hours of frustration on the back-end.
  
• No multi-channel campaigns – Renting is a one-time event.   If you are considering buying a list,  it is important to keep in mind that you may touch a prospect 6-10 times a year.   Taking a total cost approach is critical.   

Email Buyers Beware

• Privacy issues – Many providers such as Jigsaw, Spoke, Netrospex harvest email addresses from their customer’s Microsoft Outlook contact folder, receive confidential customer data as a payment or credit, spider web sites, illegally redistribute data, or all of the above.   We highly recommend marketers avoid using a source that has questionable practices and hope that a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will suffice.   The future liability is just not worth it.  See the following:
  
  • TechCrunch - "Jigsaw is the most evil company funded by well known and respected venture investors"
  • San Francisco Chronicle - "...a breeding ground for identity thieves and spammers".
• Higher cost – The cost for buying high quality, legitimate opt-in lists may be 5-10X higher than rental lists.   You should, however, consider the ability to re-market and do multi-channel campaigns.   Since the providers knows you'll see every record, they are also like to do a much better job filtering and refining the data. 
  
• Low relevancy – Even higher quality providers do a poor job organizing their data to enable the filtering and segmentation required to hit 5%+ response rates.  We ran a campaign for a customer using data from a provider (public company) that claims to have the highest quality IT data available.    After demanding that we see the list, we found that only 25% of the titles matched the campaign's target audience (IT Directors and higher).   
• Quality – Few list providers verify their information and virtually none offer a money-back guarantee.   If your provider cannot make these claims (in writing), expect poor results and have a process in place to remove the bad data from your CRM system.    Melissa Data estimates the cost of a bad record to be $100.   
• Getting ”Black-Listed” - Many email sellers fail to eliminate the info@, sales@, and ISP email addresses from their lists.  If you acquire a list with these addresses present, be sure to strip them out and remove the vendor from your preferred list.   Networks look for these obvious triggers to block senders (you) from all future electronic communications.    

The Answer? 

If you can identify a list provider that is willing and able to sell you only highly relevant, verified Opt-in email addresses and company information.  Without these minimum qualifications, however, you could be acquiring privacy issues and be subject to less than satisfactory response rates.

Please send us any B2B marketing list providers you recommend.

Targeting the Right People for Your Solution

By Kirk Crenshaw  - February 22, 2007

Taking the Time to Target Those Who Will Most Likely Buy Your Solution

I came across an interesting article yesterday at RainToday.com.  It focused on the core concept of targeting the right people, at the right companies for your demand generation efforts, and the excuses that keep companies from putting the effort into doing so. 

A specific section of this article caught my attention:

"Just buy a list. Someone sells the right list for us, right?

Every once in a while a list broker or association has just the right list for you. Typically, they don't. When it comes to list compilers (e.g. D&B and InfoUSA), in my experience, the data isn't clean enough for decent lead generation without a lot of scrubbing of the lists. The mythical "perfect list" is usually just that: a myth."

Most marketers feel this pain on a daily basis. Issues like:

• Finding lists that fit their exact needs
• Being unable to pick exact tiles, levels, roles, company size, industry, etc.  (I am  forced to  choose from a   predefined list of "selects")
• Lack of visibility into the data being "purchased" (This is a big problem specifically with rental lists)
• Having to purchase a set minimum (I can't buy only the info I want)

Demandbase will be a releasing an online service that will help marketers (and salespeople) solve these issues by allowing users to buy email, mailing, and postal lists On Demand - With no subscriptions or purchase minimums - and provide deep segmentation capabilities.

Interested?  You can sign-up for the beta.