Why is contact data acquisition important?
Keep on top of your data management
Contact data acquisition is important. To ensure that your data is of the highest quality you need to put in place a robust contact data management strategy. This includes being able to identify if you have areas which need data enrichment.
You need a process where you have a constant and systematic renewal of your contact database. Once you have acquired a contact’s details you need to ensure that they are kept up to date – there is no guarantee how long they will stay in the same position, especially in such quick moving markets as the Telcom & Broadcasting industries.
How do you acquire new data?
Ask your Sales Team
You can ask your sales team to do this as part of their role (in our experience this is not a popular option!). This is monotonous work, constantly searching the web, trade directories, contacting switchboards and looking through professional networking sites. It takes many hours to build a quality contact list of leads and your sales team are more likely to work with the data that is in your current database and their own contacts.
Traditional methods: collecting business cards
Go to a trade-show and collect as many business cards as possible! But are you really going to reach new decision makers this way? Perhaps you may get lucky and the CTO of your dream target company just happens to stop at your booth and hands over his business card…. But more likely is that you will collect the business cards of your existing partners and prospects.
Use your in-house database management team
Do you have your own dedicated in-house database management team? This team will constantly search for new profiles, fill gaps in your database and clean your database. This can be very expensive and many small to medium Technology Vendors simply can’t allocate the Sales & Marketing budget to such a dedicated team.
Ask a specialist
You can approach a specialised marketing agency to build a list for you. We always advise companies to do this with caution. Choose a reputable agency, agree upon exact targets, definitely don’t use a ‘low cost’ company (what you pay is really what you get) and ask for quality assurances.
Under what circumstances could you find it necessary to buy data lists?
New products, services or markets
You have launched a new product or service and you do not have the correct decision makers in your current database.
Likewise, if you have decided to expand into a new market or segment. In the Telco & Broadcast industries technology changes quickly – you will need to adapt to new markets or technologies quickly.
Incomplete target list
After you performed a database audit you may have discovered companies or regions missing from your database. Even if you estimate that you are covering 90% of your target market, then you are still missing 10%!
Suspected poor quality data
If you have run a marketing campaign and don’t see good results, then you might have reason to suspect that the quality of your data is poor. Three or four years ago you used the same data and had success. You know that your technology should sell well, but when you launch your own marketing campaign you find that a lot of contacts’ emails bounce back, or people contact you to say that they have moved position. You will need to practice contact list hygiene and fill the gaps in your data knowledge quickly!
Attending a tradeshow & want to meet with targets
You are attending a trade-show and wish to connect with decision makers during the show, but you don’t know who is going & you’re not sure if you have them in your database anyway!
If you want to know more about our contact data services, including the possibility to buy targeted data lists please contact us for our methodology & pricing. Contact data acquisition is important & can be a useful tool when properly used.
