New developments in B2B marketing list acquisition
By Ruth Stevens. Filed in Internet Marketing |Tags: B2B marketing, lists, prospecting
Photo credit: Wikipedia
To reach cold prospects among business audiences, sales and marketing teams often begin by developing a list of prospective targets. Marketers can find just about every target company, title and job function they need from traditional list suppliers. Plus, the Internet has made possible the introduction of some excellent new opportunities for identifying prospects at various stages of the buying cycle. Let’s look at what’s new in B2B lists these days. Traditionally, the first step in list development has been working with a list broker who has experience in your target audience category. There are more than 40,000 business lists available for rent in the U.S., plus numerous databases and online data enhancement services to choose from.
Business lists can be divided into four general types:
- Compiled files assembled from directories, the Internet, or other public and private sources, by such suppliers as D&B, InfoGroup, Data.com, NetProspex and ZoomInfo. In recent years, many compilers have been making their data available for rent via an online interface, vastly enhancing the speed and flexibility of ordering.
- Response files created as a by-product of other businesses, like catalog/e-commerce sales, seminars, trade organization memberships, or magazine and newsletter subscriptions. Response files tend to be more current and accurate than compiled files.
- Cooperative databases from multiple list owners, offered in either open format, where you pay for what you use (examples being MeritDirect’s MeritBase, InfoGroup’s b2bdatawarehouse and Mardev DM2’s Decisionmaker database), or closed format, where only members who put customer names in can take prospect names out (examples include Epsilon Abacus Cooperative and the b2bBase, a joint venture of MeritDirect and Experian).
- Internal databases populated from billing systems, lead management systems, and website registration systems. Many companies today use their marketing automation or CRM systems as their marketing databases, and populate them from a variety of internal and external sources.
A new direction in B2B lists
The B2B list industry has changed considerably in the last decade, with the proliferation of social networks. But the big new development today is the trend away from static name/address lists, to dynamic sourcing of prospect names complete with valuable indicators of buying readiness culled from their actual behavior online. Companies such as InsideView and Leadspace are developing solutions in this area.
Leadspace, created by a team of former Israeli intelligence officers, is a leader in targeted, real-time prospecting data for business marketers. Their process begins with constructing an ideal buyer persona by analyzing the client’s best customers, which can be executed by uploading a few hundred records of name, company name and email address. Then, Leadspace scours the Internet, social networks and scores of contact databases for look-alikes and immediately delivers prospect names, fresh contact information and additional data about their professional activities.
How LevelEleven took its prospecting to the next level
LevelEleven provides a cloud-based platform where sales managers can create fresh and compelling sales contests within Salesforce.com. For example, the Detroit Pistons recently used LevelEleven to organize a sales contest for skyboxes at their arena, and drove sales of over a half a million dollars. In other words, 50% of the skybox annual sales target was closed in a mere six weeks.
LevelEleven’s target prospect is a sales manager or sales operations manager in any company that uses Salesforce.com as their CRM system. Today, LevelEleven’s sales team gets leads from four sources:
- The Salesforce.com AppExchange, where other Salesforce users search for partners.
- Conferences and trade shows, like Dreamforce.
- Registrations from content downloads at the LevelEleven website.
- Rented lists of prospects.
LevelEleven has tried a variety of list sources over the years, with mixed results. In the first half of 2012, the prospecting sources produced zero in closed sales. In June 2012, they began experimenting with Leadspace. In the second half of 2012, a full 30% of LevelEleven closed deals came from this source.
According to Bob Marsh, CEO, the power of Leadspace for LevelEleven is its close targeting based on the LevelEleven customer profile. “Leadspace helps us infer pretty accurately whether a prospect is using the Salesforce platform,” he says. “And they deliver to us a short list of highly likely contacts in the account, like the Salesforce administrator or the sales operations manager. Everyone on our sales team has a Leadspace license, and it is performing for us.”
It’s a good thing that the B2B list business is continuing to evolve in new directions. What new developments are you seeing?
Tuesday, January 29th 2013 at 2:34 pm |
Hi Ruth!
Happy New Year!
Read your article in Biznology. Interesting.
Yes, B2B list acquisition and especially data appending/updating/verification is entering a brave new world thanks to the internet. Some groups are even posting international B2B lists for free on the Internet.
I am involved heavily on the international side so my comments will pertain to that.
Visionary companies have recognized that actually compiling and storing massive global B2B databases is self-defeating as it costs $$$ to house, maintain and usually produces low match rates as the data is only updated once a year or twice at most and company status and contact/job titles shift more frequently. So the answer is to create virtual databases. No massive database need reside in a company’s computer where it sits and loses relevance daily. The benefit to the client is bespoke data analysis, using up-to-date data from multiple sources, not just one. Multiple source gleaning is key as this provides additional data fields and serves to double-verify acceptable records.
Example: Recently we ran an analysis of a client’s B2B database of 125,000 records in +20 countries. A competitor, dependent upon a well-known B2B compiled database, matched 16% of the records. We were able to match 62% using multiple sources available online (business registries, phone directories, professional associations, social media sites, etc.). This form of data gleaning often also allows emails-personal not generic- to be added to the contact record.
The downside is that providing multi-country full audits prior to securing a project can be difficult as each job is undertaken individually and not just a matter of data input and pushing a few buttons to match against a mega-base.
Wednesday, January 30th 2013 at 9:40 am |
Thanks for these insights, Doug. I am not surprised that realtime data collection results in higher match rates. But going from 16% to 62% is truly impressive. In B2B accuracy is critically important, since the average order sizes are so big, and the universe sizes are relatively small. Readers will be delighted at your experience.
Question: Are you using low-cost resources, say from India or Philippines, to do the custom work you mention?
Wednesday, January 30th 2013 at 9:49 am |
You know I have myriad global contacts everywhere after so long in the biz. I do provide competitive pricing but have little patience for short-sighted companies that want to save a penny on ensuring their data is as accurate as possible yet will waste tens of thousands on campaigns while using inferior dbs. You get what you pay for.