Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation - demandblog

8 Questions You Need To Ask When Buying a Marketing List

by Jason Stewart

Buying a marketing list can be a stressful process. With so many vendors out there, it is important to ask the right questions when you are making a decision. Here are 8 questions you should always ask when you are in the market for business contact data...

1. What makes your data unique?
There are many data providers out there, and many pull from common sources such as Dun & Bradstreet/Hoovers, Jigsaw or InfoUSA. It is important to ask what makes the data in the list you are considering unique, and be sure it is not compiled from sources you have already purchased from recently.

Each individual business contact record you purchase from Demandbase is unique. While Demandbase partners with leading data companies like the ones mentioned above (and is, in fact, the only company to partner with all of these providers), we also pull data from many smaller publications and data companies and play to the strengths of these disparate sources. Business contact records are built from the ground up, with data gaps from one source filled in with information from other partners and proprietary rules run against every contact to categorize them according to department, specialty, industry and more.

2. How often do you refresh your data?
It’s important to know how often your data provider adds names to their database, but it is perhaps even more important to know how often they remove names from their database and what steps they take to prevent “dead” names from being added back to the system. Don’t be impressed by claims of “tens of millions” of contacts unless you can verify that they are actually removing out-of-date information from their system in a timely manner.

Demandbase runs quarterly email campaigns to contacts in our database to both verify the validity of our business contacts as well as give these contacts the opportunity to opt out of being included in the Demandbase database. We removed more than 2 million out-of-date business contacts from our system during our last run.

3. How is your data priced? Is there a minimum purchase?
If you can get a per-contact price of less than $1 per contact (with email!), then you are doing very well – but if you are required to spend at least $5K then it might not be such a good deal. The dirty little secret of many data providers is the minimum purchase size. After you run the parameters for your list, you will likely find that your actual list size falls beneath the requirements for minimum purchase which could lead to a “back-fill” of contacts that you may not have wanted (or needed) in the first place. Your response rates will drop because you are campaigning to prospects simply because you paid for their info, not because you selected them. And your reputation may suffer as well if you are marketing to people who are not in your sweet spot.

Demandbase has no minimum purchase requirements, and our filters are the most advanced in the industry. This means that lists purchased from Demandbase can be highly targeted based on the needs of our customers, and that there is no need to purchase leads you don’t need to fill some sort of arbitrary requirements. Contacts start at $2 (if you are buying 1 record), however volume discounts are awarded. 

4. How do you handle inaccurate data?
It makes no difference where you get your data, there is going to be some churn in the most accurate and highly marketed lists. Especially in a down economy. A key factor in dealing with your provider is to establish some sort of “return policy” in advance of the purchase. Ideally, the provider you use for your email campaigns will be able to differentiate between “hard” and “soft” bounces on the email campaigns you run, as proof of a “hard bounce” is a great basis for handling returns of inaccurate data.

If you send an email and it is not delivered, the recipient’s system typically sends back some sort of notification as to why. A “hard” bounce is when you receive a notification that the non-delivery is due to a permanent condition – like when the intended recipient is no longer at the company. A “soft” bounce is when the notification indicates the non-delivery was due to a temporary condition, such as a full mailbox or some sort of “out of office” situation.

Demandbase offers full credit back for all business contact data proven to be inaccurate as a result of a “hard bounce.” We then take your “hard bounce” information to help us maintain the accuracy of our database.

5. Do you remove or credit duplicates for contacts I already own?
A common frustration when purchasing lists is acquiring contacts you already have in your database. Make sure your data provider has some sort of system in place to remove or to credit back contacts you already own, and also (if you are a repeat customer) remove contacts you may have already purchased from them.

Demandbase tracks all your purchases so that you will never buy a contact from us more than once. We also work with you to credit back contacts that are already in your CRM.

For Salesforce.com customers the de-duplication process is automated, as the AppExchange version of Demandbase is set up in a tab inside of Salesforce.com and runs a duplicate check against your database before you buy.

6. How are your lists targeted? Do I need to pay for any filters to refine my list?
Some data providers charge you to run filters against their database that help you to target your list to your specific needs. For example, if you were looking for a list of marketing contacts at software companies you might be charged $300 to remove all non-software companies and another $300 to target the marketers. Data companies do this to try to discourage filters which might reduce the size of the list they are trying to sell you. Be aware of both the  costs associated with building a more targeted list, and the hidden costs to your reputation and response rates if you don’t filter your lists and market to contacts that are not in your “sweet spot.”

Demandbase actually has a white paper dedicated to this topic called Microtargeting for Macro Results (http://www.demandbase.com/white_papers.html, near the bottom of the page), and has the most advanced filters in the industry -- allowing you to zero in on contacts based on geography, industry, sub-industry, seniority (level of contact), department, departmental specialty and more. Each contact in the database is individually "scored" against your specific needs so you can build highly targeted lists without worrying about hidden “filter” charges or minimum purchase sizes for your lists -- and you can build and filter your list before you even talk to a sales rep.

Demandbase Professional subscription services help you to target even more closely, filtering your business contacts based on prospect companies and their activities when they visit your corporate website.

7. Do we own the data, or is this a list rental?
Data providers often rent out their subscriber lists for “one-time” mailings. You send them your creative, and they run the email campaign for you. They report back to you on opens and click-through, but the real measure of success is conversions – how many people filled out the form on the page that you sent them to in body of the email. This is the only way for you to capture the contact information of anyone in the list that you rented. Since it is a rental, the cost per lead is much lower than an outright purchase but you do not own the information and cannot market to them again without renting the list again. Make sure to clarify if the cost per lead is for a rental or for a list purchase.

Demandbase customers license all business contacts they purchase for multiple use.

8. Can I send email to the contacts I purchase from you? Are they “opt-in”?
If you are buying a list from a vendor and they claim that the entire list is “opt in” be very careful, and keep in mind that they have not “opted in” to receiving emails from you. Opt-in is the gold standard in email marketing, without a doubt -- but Can-Spam is the law and it does not cite “opt-in” as a requirement.

Email marketing is a very tricky business. I have received SPAM complaints from paying customers that I have spoken to on the phone, and I have closed business based on unsolicited (but legally “Can-Spam” compliant) emails. Be aware of the requirements for running email campaigns from your providers, as some may require you to be able to prove “opt-in” on every email you send while others simply require you to comply with the law. Agree on a policy internally that will both preserve your reputation, but also allow you to grow your brand and pipeline through the use of email. And consider paying extra for a dedicated IP address to handle your mailings, because if you are sharing email servers with other companies that do not observe the letter of the law as closely as you do, your deliverability numbers might suffer as a result of their bad practices.

Demandbase contacts include email addresses. Our contacts have agreements in place with our providers allowing for the distribution of their contact information, and Demandbase runs quarterly email campaigns to all contacts in our database inviting them to “opt-out” of being included in the Demandbase database.

Bonus Question: Do you carry data from companies outside the United States?
Accurate international business contact information is a very hard commodity to find, so if you find a vendor who has good international data you should keep them in your rolodex for when you might need them. Be very careful when purchasing international business contacts, and be sure to ask all of the right questions regarding freshness of the data, returns, and so on. There simply aren’t as many reputable providers of international data as there are those focused on the United States market, so you need to be cautious.

Demandbase focuses on United States businesses with revenues of $1M or more. We plan on slowly expanding into international business contacts when we identify and qualify reputable, accurate partners in the international business contact data space.

Try Demandbase Free
You can create an account to try Demandbase free by clicking here. After you register, you will be prompted to tell us about your target markets, and there will be $20 waiting for you in your shopping cart to test drive for first contacts on us.

Top 5 Takeaways From the Marketing Sherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit

by Jason Stewart

Last week Demandbase participated as a sponsor at the Marketing Sherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit in San Francisco. The Boston edition is coming up on October 5th and 6th.

While we spent most of the time speaking directly with customers and prospects sharing information about our B2B lead generation solutions, we also took notes from the various sessions and did a little digging into Twitter and the blogs to document tips and trends worth sharing. It is interesting to note that the top three "tweeted" tips from the Sherpa summit were, interestingly enough, a return to the basics. An emphasis on the bread-and-butter topics that Sherpa has always done really well, and that keep coming back year after year.

• e-Newsletters: Email marketing ranks highest for topics that were tweeted and retweeted at the show, proving it’s still the top tool for B2B marketers in reaching prospects and customers at every stage of the buying cycle. Consistency, relevancy, and quality content make all the difference in your email ROI. Check out the Demandbase on-demand All Star Email Marketing Webinar for more tips focused on email marketing for B2B.
• Landing Pages: Second on the tweet list is tips on building better landing pages. Probably no surprise considering that Marketing Experiments, the kings of landing page optimization, are the parent company of Marketing Sherpa and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin gave an outstanding opening presentation. The key is to make it obvious what you want them to do and why they should do it - everything else is a distraction.On a side note, the Marketing Experiments folks took a look at one of our landing pages and said it was "one of the best they'd seen all day" but offered a few tips as well as the advice that we should share more information about benefits of the offer. Much better than last year's evaluation - it's always nice to hear you're on the right track...
• Quality Content: It's not enough to write a white paper. You need to write a white paper that people will be interested in regardless of whether they become your customer or not. Whether it’s a video, an on-demand webcast, or that ubiquitous white paper it’s likely the cornerstone of most of your campaigns - or at least the ones designed to generate new leads. According to Bob Johnson from IDG, if you get customers to engage with 2 pieces of content you’ve got a 25% chance getting them into your pipeline.

The other two takeaways fall into the "buzzworthy" category...

• Buying Personas: This is a topic that seems to be gaining a lot of traction in B2B marketing, and I have heard people speak about it at several events this year including the Inbound Marketing Summit. Fujitsu and Bulldog Solutions said they increased sales pipeline by creating "buyer personas" – and people took note. You may recall the having heard about "Personas" during the last election when campaign strategists spoke about crafting messages that would appeal to the “soccer moms” ... B2B marketers are getting into the game and are finding groups with common wants and needs around their products and creating "buyer personas" to keep their team on track when developing website content, email copy, and white papers that cater to specifically to those personas. You can get started by getting sales and marketing in a roomto discuss a few current prospects in each stage of your pipeline and talk about their demographics, peers, what they’re measured on, what they need right now, and what they have in common.
• Social Media: While the topic still fills a room, it's a lot easier to find seats at the back than it was at this time last year. There does seem to be a growing backlash as there has been a shortage of fresh content out there for a while. As a matter of fact, we got a bump in traffic in the exhibit hall during the social media sessions with visitors citing "burnout" on the topic. And the top questions about of social network marketing still focus on ROI. Social media does tie in very nicely with the concept of "buying personas" though, as when you create the buying persona you should definitely factor in where your buyers are spending their time on the web (online forums or communities, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, et al.). Social networking marketing tactics are great for extending the life of your well developed content, your email campaigns, your word of mouth and keeping tabs on customer sentiment and can be worth the time and investment - but are still not likely to replace more traditional B2B marketing methods any time soon. Small and medium sized businesses, especially, often have resource challenges and have difficulty launching a significant presence in social media while still managing to do all the other things that they are expected to do. This is not to say that one "Tweet" can't make a difference - clearly it can - but managing a growing brand online, monitoring your competitors, finding the trending topics in your space and continually finding relevant content to share can suck up resources very quickly. That's where the ROI questions come into play. No one denies that there is opportunity to build pipeline out there, the questions center on the cost in time and resources.

Finally, the message we took away and encourage our customers to consider is simple: once you’ve got the basics down for a quality campaign the business is yours to lose. Pay attention to what your prospects and customers are telling you by their clicks, downloads, pageviews and tweets and then nurture them based on the behavior will directly affect your pipeline and your bottom line.

See you next year Sherpas!

Demandbase Business Contact Data

Demandbase just launched some new pages over at www.demandbase.com with some details on the kinds of business contacts you can have access to for email marketing, list building, multi-channel marketing or sales campaigns and lead generation. Modeled after traditional "data cards" from list providers, you can now check out how our database of more than 8 million business contacts breaks down by industry, company size, department and more.

The general directory of business contact lists is here, but check out these example charts breaking down marketing contacts, IT and Information Systems contacts, or Software industry contacts. All lists offer details as to their composition by sub-departments and sub-industries so that our customers can build very detailed lists.

As always, there is no minimum purchase or subscription requirements when buying contacts from Demandbase, and we'll even give you a $20 credit to buy a few contacts and check out the service. Register here for your $20 credit towards business contacts with email.

Q&A Follow Up From All-Star Email: Best Practices in B2B Email Marketing

Feedback from our last webinar, "All Star Email: Best Practices in B2B Email Marketing" has been fantastic! You can view a recording here, but there were a few great questions we ran out of time for at the end of the webinar. Here they are:

Are there best practices you would recommend to ensure that your email makes it through SPAM filter? Are there services/sites that you can use to test your e-mail for SPAM rating?
This is a great question,as just because your ESP marks an email as "delivered" it doesn't mean it went into the recipient's inbox. You could have been trapped in the SPAM filter. CAN-SPAM compliance is the first and best thing to get you past the SPAM blockers, but there are no guarantees, and deilverability success is going to require some work. One thing that you can do is remind people to whitelist your address so that they can guarantee your emails will come through ... but of course, this doesn't always help you. Especially if they are receiving the email from you for the first time. So, keep the best practices from the webinar in mind (avoid too many images, pay attention to your text-only emails, etc), check and see if your ESP has any tools or services centered around proofing your emails for deliverability before they go out, and consider hiring a deliverability firm like ReturnPath if your concerns are very serious, as they have seedlists with all the major ISPs (including the B2B ones) that show you how well your emails are performing across all of the major email providers.

Do you have a point-of-view with regard to html vs. text-based emails?
This is actually a point of contention in many companies. A favorite technique of mine used to be to create an HTML email (so that I could reap all of the benefits of reporting/opens/closes from my ESP) that looked like the regular emails I send out of Outlook. I was absolutely convinced that this was the best way to go, and that images were bad. Until I started testing emails with images, that is. In my opinion, what really matters most for driving an "open" is a combination of the FROM label and the subject line. Do they know you and is the offer compelling? After that, you goal is to drive a "click" and what really matters most to drive that click is the content. Well-formatted, informative content that shows them exactly what they expected to see when they opened the email is going to drive that click. Oftentimes the best way to present an idea or get someone interested is with images. Food for thought ... my boss prefers to send text-centric emails, but the ones he shows me as examples of what caught his eye are typically nicely formatted emails with compelling images. That's the long answer. The short answer is the usual one ... test both and see what works better for your audience.

If you conduct monthly webinars as an offer on your web site, is it appropriate to send an invitation email on a montly basis to people on your house list who have not responded or signed up previously? Or, does that risk "list burnout?"
If you are offering good, new content to your audience on a monthly basis then letting them know about will in no way "burn them out." If you are sending them monthly invitations to a "demo webinar" that is the same thing, month in and month out then you will burn them out. New content is king! If you create good, new content that people will like then your list will be safe from burnout.

Is there a "best" day/time to email? What is considered a "good" open rate for monthly B2B email via house list?
Conventional wisdom says Mondays and Fridays are not good for email campaigns. On Mondays people are more likely to delete without reading as they get up to speed from the weekend, and Friday people have "checked out" and are focused on wrapping up what they need to finish before the weekend. That being said, it might be a good idea to try out a mailing on a Monday or a Friday, since you might have less competition in the inbox. The best way to find out? Test, of course! Don't be afraid of Mondays, don't be afraid of afternoons or early mornings. Every house list is unique! I even heard someone speak once regarding their email campaigns to doctors, selling medical equipment. The best time to email a doctor? Late nights and weekends. That's when they check their email, because they are not with patients. As far as open rates go, there is no "industry standard." If it is a cold list I am happy to get 5-8% opens. My house list (who is familiar with me) can approach 20% with the right offer, but I'm happy with 12-15% if I can get it. Honestly I think it is more important to focus on what you wanted to accomplish with the email rather than how many people opened it, and go from there.

Is there a CanSpam requirement re: the time period you have to remove someone from list. (i.e. from the point of unsubscribe, when do you need to remove them by)?
We didn't know the number off the top of our heads in the webinar, but it is 10 days. Thanks to all the folks who wrote in.

B2B Email Marketing Webinar on Wednesday, August 26th

Another entry in our Demandbase monthly webinar series...All Star Email: Best Practices for Effective B2B Email Marketing.

Leading the discussion will be Erin Jacobs, Bluebird Marketing Consultant and Jason Stewart, Senior Online Marketing Manager at Demandbase. You'll Learn:

• How to build a quality list for maximum reach
• Proven B2B offers that drive response, and when to use them
• Best practices in copy writing, design and layout
• 10 tips from the pros to add sophistication to any campaign

Erin Jacobs is a Marketing Consultant with Bluebird Marketing, LLC and has 15 years experience in lead generation and direct marketing for various industries, most recently as the Director of Marketing for VerticalResponse.

Jason Stewart leads online marketing for Demandbase and is the lead blogger at Demandblog. Jason has 10 years of online marketing and B2B lead generation experience. He founded and leads the regional Salesforce.com user group in San Francisco and was one of the first 500 certified Salesforce.com Certified Administrators.

Register here.

Oh, Sweet Irony....An Email From Microsoft

by Jason Stewart

So I got a "Happy Holidays" email just now from Microsoft adCenter, and was immediately struck by the irony of the fact that a Microsoft product prevented me from reading an email from Microsoft. Click on the image below to enlarge, and always remember to make sure your email templates don't rely too heavily on images. I have no incentive to view the images, so emails like this usually wind up in the trash...

Dreamforce 2008 Session Recording: Secrets to Email Campaign Success

One last recorded presentation from Dreamforce...Secrets to Email Campaign Success.

I was on a panel with Charlie McKinney from McKesson talking about email marketing and focusing on various topics like deliverability, targeting and audience, content, tracking, email marketing analytics and best practices for follow-up. Charlie was talking about ExactTarget, and I focused on Vertical Response, two email marketing partners of Salesforce.com.

Here is the abstract from Salesforce.com:
Don’t waste your marketing dollars -- or your credibility -- on email campaigns that don’t produce results. Our panel of email marketing experts shares the secrets of success and answers your questions on list-building techniques and email marketing. Hear the latest trends, evolving opinions, and newest strategies -- and take home tips for improving your email response rates today!

Access the recording (no registration required) here.

Dreamforce 2008 Partner Preview: TimeDriver

After my post about ActevaRSVP I was contacted by another Salesforce.com partner that is going to be at Dreamforce. Dave deBronkart, Marketing Analytics director for TimeTrade Systems called me for two reasons … he really likes to talk about marketing in general, but also thought I might be interested in their TimeDriver product and a promotion they have going on at Dreamforce. He left a message I didn’t get back to right away, but he also sent an email.

I was immediately fascinated by a single line nestled within his email signature…

To schedule time with me, click here: 15 min | 30 min | 60 min

Huh.

I had gotten that voicemail from Dave, and I halfway/kinda/sorta listened to it that first time but not enough to remember exactly what he said his company did. Sorry Dave, not your fault – I was having one of those days! But then I saw the email signature and remembered that he had mentioned something about having a time scheduling application I might like. So I did what any curious marketer would do. I clicked on the link to book 15 minutes with Dave.

I was taken to a landing page with some simple, clear messaging and Dave’s picture, asking me if I wanted to check Dave’s availability for a meeting. Yes, I do! I was greeted with a simple-to-navigate calendar view, complete with Time Zone preferences showing me when Dave was available to talk.

I picked my time, entered some information on how Dave could contact me and what I hoped to talk about, and was able to save it to my Outlook calendar (or Google calendar) right from the confirmation page.

How cool is that!

The immediate, obvious use is as a great addition to the email signature line of a salesperson who is looking to book appointments - but who may be frustrated with the back and forth it usually takes to find a time that works for everybody. But as a B2B marketer, I was also struck by how amazing it would have been to incorporate this simple link into an email campaign I had just sent out to 7000 members of my house list, hoping to drive appointments to our inside sales team. The email had performed well, but how many more appointments might I have booked with a simple scheduler like this, that synchronized with the calendars of choice for my whole sales team?

When I spoke to Dave (who called me promptly at the appointed 9am at the number I provided) we talked a bit about that. He mentioned an A/B test he ran to his house list, half with the link and half without. They booked 56% more appointments from the emails with the link.

Granted, this is Dave running an email campaign against his house list and not Marketing Sherpa running the analysis - but let's do that math on that with a hypothetical  situation. Let's say you sell a product that costs $10,000. If it takes 100,000 emails to generate 15,000 opens (15% open rate) to generate 375 clicks (2.5% click-through) to book 20 appointments (5% conversion) of which 4 end up as sales (if you're lucky!) that's $40,000 in revenue. If you could increase the number of appointments booked by 50% with the same message, your new revenue number would be  $60,000. Not bad at all.

Do you want to hear the best part? It costs less than $30 per user. Per Year. With a 90 day free trial. Subscribers can open up their calendars completely, or they can set specific availabilities for TimeDriver-fed meetings.

Check out the TimeDriver Dreamforce offer here (start by clicking on the "Click to Schedule" Button), and stop by their booth to learn how it integrates with Salesforce.com.

Thanks, Dave!

Improving Campaign Relevance to Increase Response Rates

Demandbase CEO Chris Golec has written an article for www.destinationcrm.com called 5 Key Elements of Microtargeting...here's an excerpt:

"B2B marketers are increasingly adopting microtargeting to get superior results. AG Salesworks, a rapidly growing marketing services firm needed to boost the effectiveness of its client's sales and marketing programs. AG Saleworks knew that the greatest leverage would come from improving the relevancy and accuracy of the contact data it used in their campaigns. The company set out to improve the quality of the contacts in its marketing lists, and to segment the contacts based on their interests, behavior, response rates and demographic information."

Check it out here.

CAN-SPAM and Duct Tape and Vertical Response, Oh My!

Two great sources for more details on the CAN-SPAM changes that went into effect on July 7th:

Total Compliance -- What Do the Changes in CAN-SPAM Mean for You? (by John Engler,VP and GM of UnsubCentral and posted at eMarketing and Commerce).

Duct Tape Marketing podcast interview with Janine Popick, CEO from Vertical Response about the changes...listen to it or download it here.

And Speaking of Vertical Response, the webinar I did with them a few weeks back is now up and available for viewing in their community education section, "How to Do Everything." Advanced Tracking and Reporting, From Your Email Campaigns to Dollars in the Bank. Jeremy Engler from VR spoke about some advanced reporting and tracking capabilities within Vertical Response, while I focused on a tour of Google Analytics. check that out here.