The world’s best (and most successful) marketing campaigns start with first-class data. Here’s why…

Smarter customer acquisition starts with excellent data. 

First-class data – that is, data that’s current, detailed and relevant – is the first step (way before creative concept comes in to play) to connect the heart of a person to the heart of the brand and whatever product or service it is offering. 

However, as the following statistics show good data is not necessarily the start point for most marketers.

These figures raise a lot of questions. Why is data such a big pain point? Why are marketers not seeking help with it? And why are so many leads lost? The reasons vary but the solution is fairly simple.

Strong data strategy and quality data. If these are in place a painless and smarter customer acquisition experience is assured – for marketers, the sales team and, ultimately, the prospect. But just how do we get there? First let’s take a look at what’s going wrong.

The dirty and superfluous list

The objective for most marketers is to have a clean, current and relevant list. Details on the list need to relate to the campaign objectives and be useful now not yesterday. Yet ‘a worrying 23% of marketers haven’t cleaned their database in over a year’.[8]

Why is it so important to cleanse your list? Sending out information or expensive gifts wastes precious marketing budget. Often there is duplicated data or goneaways that are not only taking up precious space and time – they are making your campaign results stats look bad.

“Business data decays a lot faster than consumer data: 30% a quarter in some sectors. That means your entire list dies every year.”[9]

To make sure your list is not jammed with dead souls you can do one of two things – 1. Audit your database once a quarter (or so it’s recommended) or 2. Use a customer acquisition expert to do it for you.

If you choose to audit your database internally consider this: it has been suggested that 80% of marketing leads are lost or discarded.[10]  Why? Sales professionals need much more than basic information to get them in the door. They need a valid business reason to talk to a prospect. Providing quality and relevant data is essential for getting the ball rolling on this.

Smarter customer acquisition – what is it?

The aim of smarter customer acquisition is to find the gold keys needed for a specific campaign, that is, those bits of information that unlock the gateway to the perfect customer. By perfect customer I mean the one that is drawn to the brands ideals and is likely to buy.

Getting to those gold keys is a bit like a treasure hunt. You need to solve a number of riddles or go through a number of steps before you reach the final destination – the X where the treasure is buried. The treasure in this case being niche data – valuable information about the prospect that triggers them to follow your call to action or engage in some way. At ContactAbility we start this process by sourcing privacy compliant, targeted information from our vast network – providers that we have established a trusting relationship with over the years and whom we know from experience deliver what we ask for. So the first version of the list we get is already of a high standard before we’ve even started working on it.  

“What's more useful: a mailing to 100,000 at a 0.01% response rate or a mailing to 100 that engages over half of them?” [11]

So, in the case of a B2B campaign, we start with the essentials – good quality, basic information of what a company looks like (size, address, industry etc). We work closely with our client, and often their call centre too, to relate this information to our client’s desired campaign results. We find out more specific details about this group that may be relevant to the campaign and refine the list so that those left on it are the ones most likely to engage with the campaign at a level the client is happy with. Essentially, we play ‘perfect match’ and the result is a data list of hot leads.

Perfect match or quality leads make for an easier sale. It doesn’t have to be complicated, especially with the right tools and support to guide you through it. 

The great challenge is finding those ‘data niches’. Data niches that our clients have not been able to find or find it too resource intensive to find themselves. Consider us Data Scene Investigators (CSIs without the crime).  

One client asked us to find very specific information to build their data list as they wanted to send an expensive gift to their hottest leads. The value of a niche list for them was they only had to follow up after the gift had been delivered. This offered an immediate point of recognition and pleasurable memory of receiving the gift because the message or gift had been delivered to the right people – the contacts that wanted that gift (even though they didn’t know it until they had received it).

Getting help to build a first-class data list

“Data consultants can help locate the real reasons for your marketing campaign not achieving the desired results; it could be down to mis-targeted personas, mixed messaging or even fundamental issues with the campaign itself. So, for your next campaign, you can work together to get the right persona, which will make getting the right data much easier. Data analysis can solve almost all key challenges for marketing campaign planning.”[12] 

Using qualified lists with a niche focus gives your company a quicker return on investment. Quality lists reduce lead-time as the qualification is already done for you. This can be done right up to the appointment your sales person or call centre agent has with the lead.

Finding the best quality data first and then enhancing it with the help of customer acquisition experts will drive deeper insights thereby creating a clearer purpose and focus for marketers.

“The concept of first-party data is essential to customer acquisition, but just as important is third-party data to get additional attributes about best customers, and then go out to find lookalike best customers at scale…. Marrying first- and third-party data makes the data so robust, and gives us a 360-degree view of our customers. – Lisa Archambault, head of demand gen marketing, Zappos.com [13]

An existing tech client of ContactAbility’s was able to increase their response rate from 2% to 7% this year by using ContactAbility’s smarter customer acquisition services.  Why wouldn’t you explore how to increase response rate significantly in your next campaign by trialling ContactAbility’s service?

By: Zoe Catchlove, Managing Director at ContactAbility