The Data Debate

Finally we’re seeing b2b marketers increasingly embracing digital, with communication using traditional direct mail now migrating to other channels, the quality of email data has never been more important.

But it’s not that simply to get your hands on a fresh, quality database of industry decision makers email addresses and there aren’t many options to choose from...and even more difficult to gain ownership to manage your own e-marketing campaigns.

If you’re considering third party data owners you should enquire about their methods of data collection such as whether the data is collected through web-trawling or over the telephone, how often the data is refreshed and whether there is a guaranteed hard bounce rate. The best advice is to test smaller quantities initially from a number of well-selected lists in order to see which perform best at minimal risk. It is obviously then possible to rollout to larger numbers of the best-performing lists in the knowledge that it's money well spent.

Or you’ll need to rely on ‘piggybacking’ your message on other brand’s opt-in communications such as publisher’s e-alerts where your brand can be taken to an unsoliticited but altogether ‘warmer’ potential customer base. However, you have limited control and access to post campaign reporting.

There simply aren’t any shortcuts to acquiring reliable, quality data. The only option to guarantee a receptive, responsive audience is to acquire your own data directly. These recipients will remember giving you permission to contact them and will be anticipating the communication, making a positive response more likely. We now encourage our clients to collect an email address at every point of customer contact and entice e-mail sign up via their website at every opportunity.

Never underestimate the power of the data you have at your disposal, it’s worth every penny of invesment.