B2B Marketing Database
Summary
It is not enough to have a good quality B2B Marketing database. Here are ten simple ways to best utilize such a database.
Main Article
In the highly competitive world of B2B Marketing, creating fresh, relevant, and effective messaging is very important. That would help convert your targets into prospects, and the prospects into paying customers. But that is the second half of your problem. The first thing you need is a dependable list of people to whom you can send your promotional or informative messages. In 2018, Dun & Bradstreet conducted their 6th Annual B2B Marketing Data Report survey, in which about 89% of B2B firms felt that the data quality of the marketing database was a critical success factor for B2B Sales & Marketing. If you are involved in a Sales and Marketing effort in the B2B space, then a good Business Email Database is very important for you. Let us look at a few ways in which you can successfully utilize the power of B2B Marketing Database.
Determine Right Data fields
Whether you are purchasing information, or getting it from respondents, or collecting it from your website, there can be a large number of data fields. They could start from the basics like name, age, email id, etc. But in a B2B database, there could be many other levels of details. For example, the database might contain the name of the department, number of team members, official email ids, etc. Depending on the purpose of the B2B marketing effort, only some of those fields should be maintained. For instance, in a B2B Marketing setup, keeping personal email ids or residential addresses might not be needed at all. The lesser fields you have, the lesser effort you will need to put in for keeping it clean.
Mix Organic and Purchased Databases
There is often a debate between digital marketers whether it is better to create an organic database for the purpose of B2B marketing or it is better to buy a database. A purchased database might have some data irrelevant to you, and it will cost money, of course. But on the positive side, it can provide a jumpstart in reaching out to a number of people quickly. An organically created database is much more authentic but does take time to put together, which a company starting off and wanting to reach out to the maximum number of people quickly might not be able to afford. The best option is to use a judicious mix of both.
Assign Data Captains
When you have a large set of employees who would be using the same B2B Marketing Database, then it is important that the responsibility for the upkeep, maintenance, and cleanliness of the data be assigned to specific people. You can either respond by the departments who use the data, or you can assign responsibility according to the data field. And in each team of, say, the Purchase department, or the team that is using the date of birth field, you need to assign a single person at whose table the buck stops.
Go By Past Behavior
When you send out an email to the people on your B2B Marking database, some of them would engage actively and write back immediately with confirmation or questions. Some would read it but remain silent, but ultimately do what you wanted them to do (sign up for the webinar, attend a conference physically, send their details, etc.). And some of the recipients would neither read your emails nor do what you want them to do. I will be speaking about the housekeeping of your list, and this is an important way you can do this. Those who do not respond for several emails should be taken out of the mailing list.
Regular Housecleaning
Talking of efforts to keep your database clean, that is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a B2B Marketing database. Let us say you have a list of a 1000 email ids to whom you send a monthly newsletter. Even if 10 of those people have left their jobs and moved on to other jobs, then you lose the chance of reaching out to the equivalent of 20 people. 10 people in the older companies where you are no longer getting a message through, and those 10 new companies which you could have tapped if you had the email ids.
Keep Improving Data Headers
As you keep on using the Business Marketing Address you have, you will realize there are certain data points you have which are not being used at all. On the other hand, there could be certain data sets that would be useful to you, but you do not collect at present. Keeping your database flexible, add or subtract the data heads on an ongoing basis. People usually clean up the data points but keep data headers unchanged.
Think of Dropdown Menus
When your B2B Marketing database is being maintained and updated by a large team instead of a single individual, then there could be confusion created by two different persons providing the narrative ‘Inactive’ and ‘Not Active’ for the same recipient, but the system reads these two narratives as different data points. If you can have a drop-down menu for entering details, then there will be no chance of disparity.
Segment the Database
Often you might not need to communicate with every single person on your database. Depending on the purpose of your messaging, or the specific brand that is being launched, or the time of the year (festival, holiday, or a particular month), you might need to send your email or messaging only to specific people. In order to facilitate this, you might find it easier and convenient to keep your database segmented. For example, if you have a tool to send out birthday greetings to all the people on the database, then it would be convenient for you to arrange your database by the month of birth.
Merge Similar Data Headers
Let us take the case of telephone numbers of the people featuring in your B2B Marketing Database. A single person could have an office landline number, a mobile phone, an alternate mobile phone, a residential number, etc. Instead of having each type of data point under a different header, you might want to merge all these data headers into one field, under which multiple data points can be stored.
Standardize Your Data
Like I said before, you might be getting your data from a variety of sources. But not all of them might necessarily be in a similar format. What this means is that when you need to use your database, it could be difficult to extract data in the exact format you need. Instead of wasting effort at that time, it is much smarter to put in some effort at the time the data comes in so that the formats can be more useful. Also, use simple and standard data header names so that multiple members of your team can make the same sense of it.
