Archive for Business Marketing Lists
Business Marketing Lists Enhanced through QR Code Promotions and Data Appending
QR Codes have become quite popular lately. But, what exactly are they? QR Codes are those funny looking black and white squares that you’re beginning to see on B2C in-store displays, print ads, coupons, and even TV commercials. They’re also becoming quite popular in the B2B arena at trade shows and through direct mail promotions. They’re called Quick Response Codes and basically they’re two dimensional bar codes, developed by a Toyota subsidiary, that are readable by dedicated QR Code readers and smart phones that have cameras –which includes the majority of the smartphones on the US market today. They were originally used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing but now have become quite popular for marketing and promotions. They can be used strategically to strengthen your B2B marketing while building your business marketing lists. Google’s Android operating system has a built in QR code reader, and QR Code readers for other smartphones also built in to the OS or are easily downloaded.
Developing business marketing lists at B2B trade shows with QR code use
Scanning a QR code with a smartphone can trigger a number of different events like displaying a text screen, connecting to a wireless network or opening a web page on the smartphone’s browser. So for example, many exhibitors at B2B trade shows are running QR code promotions in their booths where they’re giving out cards or brochures with QR Code that are like the “scratch and win” coupons that used to be popular within retail promotions, only now it’s “scan and win.” When you scan the QR code it takes you to a micro site where the home page tells you if you’ve won or lost. . Another popular B2B use of a QR code is a Treasure Hunt where QR Codes at different places in the booth or around the event venue lead to a particular booth, or demo in that booth, and on the way capture your contact information in exchange for entering you to win a prize in the Treasure Hunt. The user experience can be extended by linking the user to an interactive, infotainment microsite where the consumer can interact with your brand in a smartphone game format. This application can prove to be extremely sticky, especially with the younger generations.
QR Code promotions are a great way to build your business marketing lists. Capture their basic contact information with the QR Code promotion and then use data appending to overlay data from a wide range of sources. At V12 Group, our multi-channel business database combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 15+ selectors to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic data. The database has been DPV confirmed to have 99% deliverable addresses.
Contact us to learn more about ways we can increase the value of your business marketing lists today.
Business marketing lists need the attention The V12 Group can provide to maximize your ROI.
Contact us today to get your business marketing lists segmented and enhanced.
The V12 Group is the perfect partner to contact for the most robust business marketing lists.
Business Marketing Lists – Competition in B2B Mid-market Heats Up
The explosion in cloud computing is bringing end-to-end integrated ERP, eCommerce, and CRM systems to small and mid-sized companies at affordable pay-per-use prices. SMB B2B retailers, manufacturers, distributors, consultants, and other types of companies are taking advantage of ERP-eCommerce-CRM software-as-a-service (SaaS) offers, hosted in the cloud from companies like NetSuite, Aplicor, Workday, and a host of others, to compete with each other and with the large enterprise players who have traditionally dominated their market segments. Because small and mid-sized businesses will now have the speed, agility, and efficiency that large enterprise players get from the likes of SAP, Oracle, and Siebel, etc., what you’re going to see over the next few years is the competition is going to get fierce, and there’s going an explosion in data-driven marketing strategies and tactics. Now is the time to amp up your business marketing lists.
Enhance business marketing lists in a few steps
The first step is to consolidate all of the data resources in you company into one database. If you’re like a lot of mid-market companies, then marketing, sales, and customer service are still working off of separate databases. So you might find valuable data in places like: sales transaction data, customer service records, warranty registrations, RMA’s etc., which you can append to your business marketing list. You’ll also probably find a lot of data entry errors in this type of data, but the right marketing data services provider will be able to provide you with a data cleansing service that well clean up the data entry errors, verify the addresses, and remove the duplicates.
The next step, once you’ve appended all of the relevant data from your internal data resources, is to map out your existing data structure and see if it contains the right fields to both give you a 360 degree view of your customers and prospects, as well as support your lead generation, lead nurturing, and customer relationship management needs. Here a gap analysis will tell you where you’re going to need data cleansing and what changes need to be done to your data structure, as well as what types of data you will need to append to the business marketing list to bring it up to snuff.
The next step – a forward-thinking data services provider
Now, you’re ready to take the gap analysis and use it to drive the requirements in an RFP for marketing data services providers to modify your data structure (if required), cleanse the existing data, and append new data. If you haven’t looked into data licensing instead of one-off rentals and transactional data appends, now is the time to give data licensing a good look because your data volume is going to increase if you want to stay competitive. A flexible data licensing agreement with the right marketing data services provider can save you a bundle of money, reduce cycle times, and increase your conversion states by giving you the volume and depth data that you’re going to take advantage of the explosion in high-tech marketing channels.
At V12 Group we provide a full range of marketing data services for B2B marketing managers including data cleansing and data appending. Our multi-channel business database combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 15+ selectors to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic data. The database has been DPV confirmed to have 99% deliverable addresses. We are extremely flexible to give you access to the amount of data that you need (anywhere from the entire database to specific sections, like all e-mail addresses in a specified region or category, for example) over a certain period of time, and for specified uses (like modeling, appending, mailing, etc.) for a negotiated rate.
Our rate structures include: monthly/quarterly fixed fee, CPM rate on a usage tier tied to a threshold, or a blend that flexes to accommodate your particular budget/usage scenario. Our flexible licensing agreements also provide our clients with access to the data in an operating format that best suits their operating infrastructure including access via: API, FTP, jump drive, look-up basis or a combination of these. So for example, we can batch process marketing data appends to your business marketing lists for your marketing department and feed data to your call center on a real-time basis.
Contact the V12 Group to learn more about how our suite of data cleansing, data appending, direct and digital marketing services can help you increase the relevance and effectiveness of your business marketing lists and marketing programs, enhance your customer experience, and improve your return on marketing investment (ROMI).
If your company’s business marketing lists aren’t recently cleansed or properly segmented, contact The V12 Group.
Our multi-channel business marketing lists are a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources and combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 20+ selects to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic data.
Contact The V12 group to get the maximum ROI from your business marketing lists.
Business Marketing Lists for Better Targeting
The foundation of any good B2B marketing campaign is an accurate, data-rich business marketing list because, in order to get in the door for a meeting, you need to get your communications into the hands of the right people. You need a business marketing list that enables you to target the folks who have the need for your product or service and who have the authority to purchase it directly or recommend it. If it’s a big ticket item there may be a whole group of people crossing multiple functional areas that you need to target.
The buying authority in a company for big ticket items typically can be segmented into the technical buyer(s), the financial buyer(s) and the end user buyer(s). Each of these three disciplines requires its own value proposition because, while there may be some common pain points across all three disciplines, each will have some pain points of their own that must be addressed in their language. So for big ticket items, it’s important that the business decision makers and key influencers from each department be represented.
In addition to having the right decision makers for each company, accuracy and recency are also critical. In today’s “new economy,” or “new normal,” as some people like to call it, people change jobs and companies re-organize much more frequently than in the recent past. So it’s important that a business marketing list be current; that the names are spelled correctly; and the contact information is correct. If you are going to be executing a multi-channel marketing campaign, each record must have both postal and e-mail addresses in addition to a phone number. And obviously, accurate direct dial numbers are preferred over main switchboard numbers.
A good business marketing list should also have a comprehensive set of data for each person because the more you know about each person, the better you can segment the list, and the better you can tailor the value proposition for each segment. This is where data appending for business marketing lists comes in handy. Data appending will significantly increase the value and power of any business marketing list. With a robust business marketing list you will be able to do more granular segmentation which will enable:
- Higher response rates on lead generation campaigns
- Lead nurturing which will shrink the sales cycle and increase close rates
- Cross-media campaigns to drive customers to micro sites or to on-line communities of customers and prospects with similar issues. This will increase close rates, improve customer retention and, depending on what business you’re in, may even lower customer support costs
Building a robust business marketing list is a complex task. You can’t do it alone. You need a partner like V12 Group with large, up-to-date data resources, extensive domain knowledge and the willingness to share best practices with you.
At v12 Group we provide a full range of data services for business marketing managers. Our multi-channel business database combines postal, email, and phone data, as well as more than 15+ selectors to improve targeting. This includes firmagraphic and contact level demographic data. The database has been DPV confirmed to have 99% deliverable addresses.
Business Marketing Lists – Key Factors
B2B marketers have traditionally lumped business marketing lists for activities like lead generation into two categories: their internal house list and external lists which are rented or purchased. House business marketing lists, while they offer the promise of yielding the best response rates are often a big mess.
Many companies’ in-house business marketing lists are an amalgam of lists pulled from multiple company databases that are often out of synchronization and contain incomplete and inaccurate records. And, many companies, even though they may have evolved to the point where they have one single CRM database, still find that their database is a mess.
This lack of a robust data structure leads to poor segmentation, and so many companies bang their house business marketing lists too many times with one size fits all communications which over time reduces the yield.
So how do you get a robust, well-structured business marketing list?
The first thing you need to do is cleanse the data by:
- Removing duplicate records (de-duping)
- Purging the garbage data, and
- Verifying the postal and e-mail addresses and phone numbers where they exist.
By working with V12 Group, you can take advantage of our in-house team of marketing database, campaign management and analytical experts that each represents more than 15 years of experience handling marketing database projects for some of the largest companies in the world.
We’ll verify that the data structure will support the tactics in your marketing plan, and if not, add the necessary data fields to the structure. Now, you’re ready for the final step which is data appending. In this step you’ll work with an external vendor like V12 to add data from external data sources to not only fill in the blanks in your internal list, but also add data that will give you a more granular view of your customers and prospects.
Data appending will significantly increase the value and power of your business marketing list. With a robust, business marketing list you will be able to do more granular segmentation which will enable:
- Higher response rates on lead generation campaigns
- Lead nurturing which will shrink the sales cycle and increase close rates
- Cross-media campaigns that drive customers to micro sites and on-line communities of customers and prospects with similar issues, which will increase close rates, improve customer retention and, depending on what business you’re in, may even lower customer support costs.
Building a robust business marketing list is a complex task. You can’t do it alone. You need a partner like V12 Group with large, up-to-date data resources, extensive domain knowledge and the willingness to share best practices with you.
Click here to contact us about ways we can increase the value of your business marketing lists today.