There are many marketing professionals out there that are vehemently against buying lists for prospecting. And there are, of course, very good reasons why:
- Permission – these prospects have not opted into solicitations from you so you risk your reputation by spamming them. Sending an unsolicited email doesn’t violate CAN-SPAM regulations in the United States as long as you have an opt-out mechanism… but it’s still seen as a shady practice.
- Quality – there are thousands of sources across the Internet and; unfortunately, many of them are outdated or inaccurate. As a result, your effort to solicit the recipient can result in terrible response rates – or worse – a damaged email reputation.
- Reputation – cold-calling or emailing a contact that you have no relationship with may ultimately hurt your company’s reputation and get you known as a spammer.
Purchased Prospect Lists Are The Norm, Not The Exception
Over a decade ago, I worked at a permission-based email marketing platform. Every day, our deliverability team advised every customer to never purchase any list and to ensure they enabled double opt-in for all new email subscribers. If you even mentioned importing a purchased list, you were scolded by leaders within the company. In the import process, you had to check a box that stated that you didn’t purchase the list.
The dark secret, of course, was that the company’s own marketing team was purchasing lists for outbound email and cold-calling strategies every single day. They still do – I have unsubscribed from their platform several times over the years and eventually pop up on a new campaign from time to time.
Not only that, the entire sales team understood that they were selling volume email contracts to clients that were purchasing lists. When you’re making money by increasing email volume… you don’t really care where your clients are getting email addresses from as long as you don’t get SPAM complaints.
I know very few companies with an outbound sales and marketing effort that don’t incorporate cold-contacts into their sales and marketing strategies. The simple fact is that cold-calling and email marketing purchased lists can work if you have a list of the highest quality, are targeting your prospects very carefully, and are respectful that you’re not pushing sales or nagging for a response.
How To Leverage Purchased Prospect Data
If we could do without purchased prospect data, I believe as marketers we all would. However, we know that we need to get in front of prospects to build awareness for our brands – and the email inbox is an effective way to do it. Here’s my advice on purchasing prospect lists:
- Vetted Lists – Data accuracy is your biggest challenge when it comes to lists. B2B lists turn over at a double-digit pace as people move from company to company. And employee responsibilities are constantly changing as employees move from job to job within the corporation. Using a list provider that has up-to-date, vetted data from multiple sources is absolutely critical.
- Segmentation – Understanding the geographic locations, firmographic characteristics, and roles & responsibilities of your prospect is essential if you wish to market to them via email. The higher the relevance is to your prospect, the lower the risk of losing them in those first interactions.
- Value – Spewing your pitch in an unrelenting stream of SPAM isn’t just going to lose you an email recipient, it’s going to damage your brand and your reputation. Provide value and additional resources in your first emails to prospects and only follow up when there are signs of engagement.
UpLead Verified Prospect Lists
Uplead verifies their prospect data through an 8-step process, including public records, licensed third-party data, machine learning, testing & validation, real-time verification, and feedback is used to update UpLead’s database to further improve the quality.
As voted by users, UpLead has been identified as the most accurate lead generation source in comparison to lists provided from ZoomInfo, D&B Hoovers, and Clearbit. UpLead products include:
- Prospector – Search through over 54 million profiles is easy. Simply tailor your search using over 50 filters to find leads that match your ideal profile. Then access their profile to find their direct contact information and engage in seconds.
- Data Enrichment – Do you already have your database? Upload it to UpLead and enhance it by appending 50+ fields of detailed contact information in seconds.
- Email Finder – An advanced email finding tool that lets you connect with the key decision-makers that matter to you.
- Email Verification – Real-time verification for every email address with a guaranteed accuracy rate of 95%. You can choose to flag and avoid using catch-all emails.
- Chrome Extension – UpLead’s Chrome extension is an easy way to find B2B company and contact information in seconds.
- Technographics – Instantly generate lists of qualified leads based on which technologies your ideal buyers use — or haven’t used yet, incorporating over 16,000 data points.
- API – The UpLead API provides company and contact data to help grow your business.
Regardless of whether you’re a marketer looking to generate more leads for your company, or a salesperson who’s trying to get in touch with ab important prospect, you can rely on UpLead to do the heavy lifting
Start a Free Trial with UpLead
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