The Impact of Data Cleansing and Validation on your Marketing Efforts

How can top B2B organisations buy the most qualified Lead Lists

Buy lead lists from B2B data partners. Get access to decision makers, phone numbers, email addresses, and detailed company information.

A lead list needs to be targeted to your exact marketing goals. Generic marketing lists target a very large segment of the market, based on demographic and firmographic information. That’s why they contain a lot of those who may not need your service.

Many top marketers define a lead list as a comprehensive collection of contacts within a company who have willingly opted to participate in your marketing endeavours. This brings us to the idea of consent based marketing.

A database built on consent is a very accurate database. Those you have reached out to are more likely to open and read through your marketing messages. They will not unsubscribe or mark you as spam. This is what separates a successful marketing or sales campaign with high ROI, from a poorly performing campaign. Top multinational organisations thrive on high such quality data.

Indeed, you can instantly download millions of contacts and email ids from online databases, giving you access to potential leads in completely new markets. But if this lead list is not truly refreshed and accurate, you end up spending your marketing budget on stale leads. Besides, you also damage the credibility of your domain, on account of your emails being classified as spam.

So let’s look at where a large organisation should start in order to buy high quality leads:

Starting with 100% accurate data is key. Despite all the tall claims of data accuracy among the various data vendors and software tools, users complain of inaccurate data. This is because of the high level of automation involved in sourcing and refreshing leads. Automated refresh rates cannot be set to daily cycles, as these databases run into millions of contacts with varying levels of detail.

The answer lies in data research teams who refresh data manually before and during your campaign, to make sure that data is never stale.

Besides refreshing data, data research teams also source lead lists from the ground up. They do not store data, but build lead lists for each new client. They give you a replacement guarantee to ensure you buy leads that are 100% accurate. They also tell you the date and time the lead was last updated.

This combined with consent based marketing where you rely on single and double opt-ins to give you added layers of consent, helps you ensure that the person has opted in to receive your message. With such a foolproof way to combat data decay, there is no way your lead list can get stale.

What you need to know before buying a B2B Lead List

Know your target audience through segmentation:

If you’ve decided to buy a B2B lead list, it’s important you know who your target customers are, and what their preferences are. Some B2B lead lists are filled with generic leads to suit many different companies, but this can be a huge waste of money. Knowing your audience helps to target them in a more direct and personalised way.

Accuracy of your vendor’s data

Inaccurate data can cause your salespeople to waste valuable time trying to contact someone who has changed jobs and is no longer at the company. In contrast, fresh data helps you speed up your pipeline, narrow your target to people who may actually want to buy from you, as well as create a context for your outreach.

Ask your provider how they source their data, and if it comes from well-known, reputable sources.

Data Refresh Rates

You must also find out how regularly the provider’s data gets refreshed. People change jobs a lot, so your team could be prospecting to decision-makers who have long since moved on. Many email data providers have monthly refresh cycles. Few claim to refresh their data weekly.

Knowing the date and time when your data was last refreshed is the highest level of refresh information that you can receive, and is provided by very few data partners.

Additional Insights Provided

Intelligence and insight tells you when it’s a good time to contact a prospect. These could be events such as: a company receives a new round of funding, a new CEO is appointed, a company is recently acquired by another company.

There could be event triggers within companies too. If a contact you know well gets a promotion, they may have more scope to do business. You’ll also need to get to know their replacement.

We call these events sales triggers. Depending on how well your data provider monitors company news and financial insights, they could be able to provide you with these sales triggers as soon as they happen, so you can reap the rewards. Ask your provider about their insight and intelligence options.

The Completeness of your data

Start by asking your provider about the types of data points they supply on each profile, like direct dials, email addresses, linkedin or other social profiles etc. Email list segmentation is highly important for the right targeting and personalisation. Next, check if single and double opt-in information is being provided. This ensures you have the contact’s consent before you reach out.

Some B2B data providers will have more complete data in specific industries or geographies. You will need a provider that is strong globally, across all sectors, because your sales strategy may change over time.

Data Compliance

New rules and regulations in data privacy are being issued globally every year, so you need to work with a supplier that meets international regulatory standards. Many countries have specific rules about data, from GDPR in Europe, to CAN-SPAM in the U.S. Make sure you’re familiar with the rules before you buy, and check that the company you purchase from has met the data compliance requirements for the specific location in which you plan to use the list. As the penalties for non-compliance can be severe, it’s critical that you investigate your provider’s compliance status thoroughly.

Here are some data compliance questions you can ask your provider:

  • Are you fully GDPR-compliant?
  • Do you use GDPR-compliant CRM and storage software?
  • Do you collect only relevant and necessary data for legitimate business interests?
  • Do you keep detailed and accurate records of how you collect and process data?
  • Have you partnered with any 3rd party data vendors?
Cost Of Your Data

There are 2 factors to consider when it comes to pricing of data services. High-quality leads seem to have a high cost in the beginning. But that is only because they are targeted, up to date and accurate. While leads that are cheaper, can be low-quality and later require you to spend on cleaning up your list. You end up with bounced emails and an email campaign with low ROI. This is a higher price to pay in the long run.

Some studies even estimate that low-quality lead lists end up being 60 percent more expensive than high-quality lists due to the amount of stale leads and the time spent cleansing the list later.

No matter how tempting it is to buy the cheapest leads out there, in the long run you’re better off spending more and investing in a high-quality lead list.

Communication With The Vendor

Data solutions can often be complex, especially when you’re using them for the first time. Make sure your vendor is strong at onboarding, as well as having a support team to help with any queries further down the line. This means you need to evaluate your vendor on customer service as well as data quality.

With customised data services, setting up strong communication channels between teams is essential. So you must make sure your vendor has a strong management team, who responds quickly to queries and bottlenecks. The vendor should also have a strong IT infrastructure in place for sourcing and transfer of data.

Bearing all these factors in mind will help you achieve greater success rates with your email lists.

Buy lead list for cold calling and advertising

The importance of buying a lead list for Cold Calling

Cold calling might be seen as an ancient method of reaching out to your prospects, but it is considered quite effective by marketers and salespeople. Cold calling can become a tedious task if you have not targeted the right prospects through very precise and granular methods. Cold calling leads that might not be the best fit for your product and services, results in wasted time and effort.

A well-researched B2B lead list allows your teams to focus their efforts on businesses that are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer, increasing the chances of conversion. The list can be customized to include additional criteria, such as industry, company size, location, and job titles, ensuring that the leads are verified and highly qualified. A layer of sales intelligence can also be added to tell you which companies use the technology products you are selling, when is the best time to approach any lead, creating a personalized pitch that establishes a connection with the potential customer, and most of all which accounts are in the market with the intent of purchase.

When all the above points are taken into consideration, you have a lead list enriched with all the important data points, so you can pinpoint your prospects for targeting through cold calling or advertising or email marketing.

The importance of buying a lead list for Ad Campaigns

Another crucial way to reach new prospects is through advertising on social media. With the advent of social media advertising, businesses have been able to streamline their efforts to a targeted set of prospects who are shown advertising messages based on their preferences, increasing their chances of conversion.

Besides advertising through google ads, the two social media networks most preferred by B2B marketers are LinkedIn and Twitter. LinkedIn has over 900 million members, and Twitter has over 300 million monthly active users (MAU), which might seem overwhelming at first, but a B2B lead list helps to funnel down that number.

By using a prospect list, you can create custom audiences on social media platforms, ensuring that your ads are seen by potential customers who are more likely to be interested in your offerings. This targeted approach can help you save money on advertising costs and increase your ROI to a great extent.

A well-curated B2B list can play a good supporting role in improving your conversion rates by actively engaging your prospects with your content or advertising message. This leads to a better customer experience and a better brand reputation. With the full extent of additional data points, you can create specific messages by segregating your leads based on their industry, company size, job titles, etc.

The quickest way to buy leads for cold calling and ad campaigns:

Buying a Lead List Online:

B2B databases or email finder tools are the quickest way to buy leads. These databases are also called email verifier tools or sales intelligence tools, as many of them provide additional layers of marketing and sales intelligence.

You can use these online research tools to identify potential leads that match your ICP. A variety of platforms, such as LinkedIn, Google, and industry-specific databases, can help you find companies and individuals within your target market. Use advanced search filters to narrow down the results and focus on leads that have the highest potential.

To understand the limitations of these tools we need to understand how they work. These online databases and email finder tools are basically storehouses of very large datasets. They allow quick downloads for multiple users. The main issue is in keeping these millions of data points refreshed in real-time, which is not feasible even using software automation. This results in lack of accuracy in the contact details they offer, despite above 80% claims of accuracy.

The Answer Lies In Data Research Teams

Now compare this situation with a team of data researchers, working as your research team of full-time employees.

What makes it profitable to buy a lead list from data research providers?

These data researchers work from the ground up on very specific niches, as per the market you need to target. They conduct both Primary (in-person) and Secondary(web-based) research to give you email ids, phone numbers, addresses, NAICS, SIC codes, and even actionable insights to aid your decision-making, trend analysis, market and competitor intelligence, and everything you need for the success of your campaign. They even replace any stale data record due to lead switching jobs or any other reason. In this way, they work as true data partners for organisations that are serious about achieving high ROI on their marketing campaigns.

These research teams have structures and workflows built for high productivity, with team leads, subject matter experts, and quality control staff. There is a combination of Automation and Research, Analytics, Reporting, Visualisations, and Recommendations to achieve higher returns on your campaigns.

The strength of these research-oriented companies is in the strong base of subject matter experts, and their customised approach, to deliver a huge number of records per month. The true extent of flexibility is seen in the ability of these teams to take up additional tasks to facilitate the client’s pipeline like project setup and contact mapping within the CRM, project planning and management, plus inside sales activities, which aids lead generation. Thus in the end you don’t just get a list of contact details but even reports and insights to help with future decision-making. This is why data research companies can be seen as growth drivers who help clients increase their ROI and scope of work over the years.

In conclusion, building a solid lead list is essential for successful cold calling, advertising and email marketing.

But no matter which of the above 3 methods you choose, your list needs to be up-to-date with the most recent details at all times. Whether it’s an email list or cold call list of phone numbers, it needs to be cleaned of stale data.

If you do this process manually, you will need to remove outdated contacts and add new ones yourself. By defining your ICP, utilising research tools, leveraging social media, attending events, and using referrals, you can identify potential leads that match your target market. Putting all this time and effort requires your company to hire an in-house marketing, sales, content and business development team. To save all this effort, cost and resources within your company, and get this work done by software tools.

If you are using software tools, you should choose one that has a built-in qualification process. These tools have algorithms that automatically qualify leads so you don’t have to go through them manually.

Or you could outsource this effort to data research specialists who have a team of full time data experts plus software automation, to source and verify leads for your cold calling or advertising campaign. This is the only method that ensures 100% accuracy and 0 errors as the team supports you till the end of your campaign, unlike common data vendors whose liability ends with the download of their data.

Out of the tons of vendors to source and enrich data, Ascentrik Research is one of the very few data enrichment partners, who gives you a team of researchers. Our researchers source, validate, cleanse, and enrich your data in real time for your campaigns. Rather than relying solely on automation, we have a team of researchers who build exclusive databases for each client, without storing or reusing previously built databases. Each phone number and email id is manually verified through calling and automated email verification programmes that ensure user consent, accuracy and data privacy.

To know more about our lead list building company that gives you consent based, fresh and customised data, visit us here

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