Build a Better Prospect List

This checklist will help you build a list with complete and accurate records including the right titles and companies to meet your account-based marketing needs.

1. Customer profile
2. Industry categories, company size/revenue/location and SIC/NAICS analysis
3. Target company list to define market universe
4. In-house title analysis
5. Multiple list vendors to optimize market coverage
6. Preview titles before buying
7. Progressive purchasing to avoid buying duplicate emails
8. Measure market coverage (lists vs. market universe)

List vendors are continually adding new contacts— consider updating your marketing database at least twice a year to add newly available email contacts.

How to Build Optimized Marketing Databases

What is Your Target Market?

Start with identifying current target industry categories along with company size by employee count, revenue and location criteria, appending firmographic data to in-house customers and prospects. For more finite industries and areas of focus, leverage a unique market defining SIC/NAICS code* matrix that enables you to simultaneously view broad industry segments (two-digit SIC codes) and granular market segments (four- and eight-digit SIC codes) to ensure all attractive target markets are identified and selected. Once completed, market-size test with sales revenue and employee data to develop pragmatic and realistic target market definitions.

Target Companies

You are now ready to use your finalized target market definition to create a list of target companies. This is the list you will send to multiple list vendors so that all are working with a consistent market definition and company list. Your list of target companies represents the entire market universe—use this as an objective measure of market coverage achieved by each list vendor.

Target Titles and Personas

Now you’re ready to analyze your in-house customer and prospect lists to identify target titles and personas, or job roles. Your goal is to create a list of key title words associated with decision makers and, equally important, influencers—enabling you to reach the people whose problems you are solving. You’ll need to identify authority levels (C-suite, VP, Director, Manager, Supervisor, etc.) and functional roles (data center, networking, infrastructure architect, business intelligence) associated with decision makers and influencers. Next, identify the maximum number of contacts to be targeted within each company. To understand the total addressable market, we recommend you don’t limit yourself initially. Be sure to generate separate counts for decision makers and influencers to accurately control the proportions of each role. Finally, create a target title matrix that contains all title key words, authority levels, and functional roles which you will need to send to multiple list vendors.

Market Coverage

The next step will be to measure total market coverage by comparing your target company market universe to the accumulated company coverage from multiple list vendors.

While B2B email marketing may be challenging, remember—email is the only marketing channel your target prospects check up to 20 times a day.

Technographic and Intent Data

Intent data can be leveraged to identify which companies are actively consuming content related to your services and solutions to ensure you are targeting accounts already showing interest and “buyer intent.” While intent data can help you narrow your focus, be careful not to exclude companies in your target account list, as intent data changes daily and various sources can provide varying levels of accuracy. Technographic (info related to a company’s technology stack) can also be sourced to determine which companies own a related, competitive, or gateway product/solution that feeds to your offering. By leveraging technographic/product ownership data, you can often pinpoint which companies may own end-of-life products, or who will be in the market for your solution shortly.

Multiple List Vendors

There is no single list vendor that has all companies and titles, so plan to source from multiple list vendors to achieve optimal market and title coverage. To avoid buying duplicate records, purchase lists incrementally and in sequence, so each incremental list purchase serves as the suppression list for the next. If your objective is to obtain a list of entirely net new contacts, be sure to include a suppression list of emails and/or domains you wish to exclude from your target list when working with each list vendor. The eTrigue team has negotiated contracts with no minimum charge to avoid paying premium pricing for small incremental purchases. This enables us to optimize market and title coverage at an affordable cost. We work closely with each list vendor in the key word selection process, ensuring we accurately select their best email records.

Quality

Control It will be critical to negotiate Preview File Agreements with each list vendor to review title selections prior to purchase. This ensures title selections match your target matrix. (You wouldn’t want to receive “Security Guard” titles included in a search for “Director of Network Security.”) Next, reformat all purchased lists into a universal template and generate quality control summary reports for the combined marketing database. You will need to create a series of quality control summary reports that include title count, company count, contacts per company, and list source count.

The rate of B2B data decay has been as high as 73% per year — representing the combined impact of employee turnover, job role changes, and opt-outs.

What Makes Our Approach to Building B2B Databases Unique?

We define target markets, target companies, and the target marketing universe to ensure all list vendors are working with the same accurate targeting standards. Leveraging a unique market defining SIC code matrix enables marketers to simultaneously view broad industry segments and granular market segment details to better define desirable target markets. This target title matrix ensures all list vendors are working with the same accurate target title definitions that include key words, authority levels, and functional roles.

A Few Ways Our Business Model Sets Us Apart

• Title Previews: We’ve negotiated titles to be included with all previews, allowing us to quality control prior to purchase, and eliminating any titles that do not meet target quality standards.
• Progressive Suppression List Buying: This ensures we do not purchase the same records more than once.
• Transparent/Fixed Project Costs: We provide all research, summary data counts, and preview data for a project without cost to you. Once you have confirmed your selections and are ready to purchase data, we will deliver the records with all data fields available.
• Working With Existing List Vendors: We can work with your existing subscription in a fully integrated approach. By sourcing records from multiple list vendors, we help diversify any risk associated with list accuracy and freshness.
• Project Timing: Project list development typically takes 3-5 days to complete. After first gathering your input, suppression, and target markets, we research and run various options for your review. During a 30-minute call, we will share findings for your selections, and will also provide insights you may wish to consider. Based on our findings, we will provide “Preview Data” for each list you wish to review. A preview file will contain title, managerial level, company, location data that are all needed for you to review the records you wish to acquire. Once you have made your selections, we will then pull complete contact data for each record and provide it to you.

Custom List Development and Segmentation

You may have targeting needs that require specialized data—such as granular industry data (e.g. manufacturing company sites with 100+ employees). In this case we would conduct research to acquire specialized data and databases that meet your specific targeting criteria.

We can also assist with customized services such as email appending to company contact name lists, specialty list vendors, and specific software, services, or technology installations. It is also possible to negotiate individualized, unlimited, 12-month license agreements with vendors that normally only rent lists to enable clients to gain access to lists that are not readily available in the B2B email acquisition market.