Are you backing the right horse?
Posted on 16/07/2012
Data is the engine that drives good marketing and sales mangement. Usin some mailing lists or relying on an old contact database can mean wasting time and money contacting companies who have moved, ceased trading, wrong information or aren't really a prosepect at all.
A well-researched, continuously updated prospect database keeps you ahead of your competitors and helps you pinpoint your ideal customers precisely whether you sell to fabricators, installers, architects or building companies. But what should you look for in a good prospect database? Sonia Punter, Divisional Manager at Insight Data, highlights the five golden rules of prospect data.
1. Is the data thoroughly researched?
Relevance and accuracy are both essential to your marketing data. Having a database that is padded out with records that aren't your target audience is simply a waste, yet some data suppliers do this routinely to increase database numbers.
How accurate is the data? There will always be human error on a database, but having an experienced, well trained research team updating the information will improve accuracy. The frequency of updates is also vital as records can become out of date very quickly. At Insight Data we tackled this problem by creating the industry's largest telephone research team who make over 200,000 calls per year.
2. What technology is used to check data?
Telephone research alone isn't enough. After all, if a researcher can't get hold of someone by telephone the record can sit on a database unchecked for years - a recurring problem on many databases.
Insight double-verifies records against credit reference and other data sources in real-time so we'll know what's happening even before the telephone research team call. It also enables us to identify new start-ups much quicker so our customers can target potential new business.
3. How often is the data tested?
It is important that prospect data is routinely tested and validated by the data supplier. At Insight we use a closed-loop returns process which means our entire database gets mailed on average every four weeks with the results fed directly back to our research team - this ensures we retain the best deliverability rate of any UK data provider - currently 99.4%. The same process is applied to email data which is tested continuously and any email 'hard bounces' are fed directly to the research team for updating.
4. Is the data available in real-time?
There's no point having up-to-the-minute information if you can't access it. Most data providers now enable their customers to access prospect data online - but this can still mean the information is vastly out of date if the online database is only updated every 6 or 12 months.
Being able to access fresh, accurate and relevant prospect data 'as it happens' gives your business and sales team a powerful competitive advantage. That's why Insight Data developed Salestracker, the only prospect database system that us updated live in real-time.
5. Is the supplier serious about their business?
Supplying prospect data is a business, and like any other supplier there are those that invest and innovate and those that take short-cuts. For Insight, it's always been about investment, such as our in-house software team or state-of-the-art call centre. We're also the only data supplier in the UK to members of both the Direct Marketing Association and the Glass & Glazing Federation.
If you want the most from your marketing, it pays dividends to use the right prospect database. A little research of your own will quickly reveal which database is right for you.
