Purchasing Data Lists and Things To Consider
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Specifying The Perfect Data Lists
When selecting data lists for your marketing there are numerous selection criteria to consider:
Geography
Data lists can be segmented by geography (postcodes) to distinguish sales territories or catchment areas.
Industries
There are some 2,000 industry classifications, which may be grouped by Business Group and Market Sector (e.g. “Finance” or “Education”) to identify the ideal business data lists target market.
Company Size
Turnover and employee size are the usual variables for segmenting data lists by company size. Because turnover is not populated on every record, the data lists are better selected by employee size. There are pitfalls with this however; “5 employees” can equate to a husband & wife team with say two temporary employees. Therefore when 5+ employees is a requirement you may wish to consider 6+.
Premise Type
There are 14 premise types to consider, such as retail outlets, factories, businesses at home and offices. Generally data lists are not selected by premise type unless the clients’ services are specifically related to the premise type of a company (such as office cleaning, or fork lift trucks requiring a warehouse).
Date Established
The date a business was established at site will indicate a company’s age, and therefore its newness to new sales of (say) office furniture, website development or utility services. Data lists regularly require this screening filter.
Sites Job Title
The job title of the most senior contact name at site is one of the best kept secrets in selecting business data lists for marketing. To appreciate the power of this variable, imagine what the following job titles tell you not just about the individual, but also the company you are targeting: Landlord, Head Teacher, Managing Director, Dentist, Branch Manager, Chairman, Proprietor. In general, branch managers (and other managers) are used as a screening filter to remove the non-decision makers from marketing data lists
Contact Your Data Lists
Once data lists have been purchased, they begin to decay immediately; contact names leave businesses and companies relocate, change names or go out of business. Similarly, phone numbers change too. Therefore it is important that the data lists you purchase are contacted as soon as possible; ideally within 30 days. Guarantees on data quality are applied within the first 30 days after supply.
The main methods of marketing to data lists are:
- Direct mail
- Telephone marketing
- Email marketing
- Fax broadcasts
Therefore it is important to specify before purchasing data lists how the data will be contacted. For example, telephone numbers should be pre-screened against The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) prior to supply, to ensure your compliance and not upset the prospects you call. Approximately 20% of businesses are registered with the TPS; more for the smaller businesses and less for the larger ones.
