Choosing the Best B2B Data Provider to generate high quality leads

Cold outreach is as essential to marketing and sales, as maintaining relationships with existing customers and subscribers to your content. But no other method of marketing needs to be used with more caution than cold outreach. The first reason being that intruding on someone without consent in order to sell your products, is not only annoying but is also considered a breach of privacy and a legal offence in many countries. The second reason is that the damage it does to your brand in the physical and online world is almost irreversible. Any email marketer understands the high loss from bounced emails, unsubscribes, spam flagging, and unread emails.

All this can be carefully avoided through knowledge of the right ways to source data for email marketing and cold calling. Doing this will help you reap the benefits of the very powerful technology of extracting data and sales intelligence. With the right data in hand your company's business development, marketing and sales teams will derive greater success from their efforts and your organisation’s profits will increase.?

B2B Database Providers For Quick Data Download

Companies like Zoominfo, Cognism, Lusha, DnB Hoovers, Demandbase (formerly Insideview) are B2B data providers who provide quick access to data. You can get started by signing up and creating a free account. By upgrading to a paid plan you can get access to a collection of more than a million company profiles, direct dials, direct emails, and C-level contacts.

Some offer yearly contracts which are not preferred by many users. Many have a credit based system where unused credits expire on a monthly basis. Many users also find these b2b data providers too pricey considering that the data they provide is not 100% accurate.

Another factor is niche data and access to industry specific contact details over generic data of commonly demanded profiles, that’s available in most databases. In accessing niche data that is very specific to a particular industry for targeted marketing and sales campaigns, you will usually find most b2b data providers falling short.

Email finder tools or sales intelligence tools from b2b database providers

In the category of b2b data providers, you will also come across email finder tools, also called email list builder tools, or sales intelligence tools. These help marketers and salespeople quickly collect a list of prospects to market to. Some of them are Hunter.io, Sales Intel.io, Apollo.io, Clearbit, Datanyze, Linkedin Sales Navigator, 6Sense, Lead411 etc.

Depending on the tool you choose you can extract a great amount of details about the person like name, email ID, phone numbers, office address etc. You can also receive additional information like company size, revenue, mergers and acquisitions, sales triggers etc. While at one level you have the ability to reach out to those who are relevant to your industry, at yet another level you can be notified of buying signals which will help your sales team approach a prospect at the right time.

Who should use email list builder tools or email finder tools?

1. Marketers who want to build lead lists on demand.
2. Salespeople who need mobile numbers and emails and identify decision-makers in companies they want to do business with.
3. Those who are technically comfortable trying out various software tools, and finding the best fit for their needs. This is required since all the features you want may not be available in a single software.
4. Marketers and salespeople who do not mind a certain percentage of data being stale, as it doesn’t affect the outcome of their campaign to a large degree.
5. Those who want additional intelligence like intent data or technographic data. Such platforms help them know who has the intent to buy their product/service, and find the right time to approach them with their products. They can also know which technology or software is being used by their prospects, to identify leads that are relevant.

B2B Data Partners For Complete Support Through Your Campaign

Data partners, on the other hand, have a unique approach to list building. Our goal is to solve the most widespread problem of stale data. We do this through a dedicated team of data researchers, combined with automated processes, for building email lists at scale.

Once we know what kind of data you need, we source and enrich your data for you. In this method of data sourcing, data is never stored, so there is no question of it getting stale. Each client’s data becomes their intellectual property, and cannot be used by their competitors.

Data partners can provide any data in its freshest state since it is sourced from the ground up. Such databases are custom built for each individual email marketing or cold calling campaign. Often organisations need to target decision-makers in very specific industries. This kind of data is hard to find in common databases, and can be researched only by custom data partners. The example of decision-makers from niche industries is the best use case for custom databases built by b2b data partners.

Comparison between b2b data providers and custom data research partners

1. Data providers like Cognism allow you to build your list yourself, using the basic and advanced filters provided in their web app. Data partners have a DEDICATED TEAM that supports you all through your email or advertising campaigns, with smaller, purpose-driven datasets.
2. Then there is NICHE DATA which is very hard to find using data providers and popular sales intelligence platforms. Such highly targeted profiles are where data partners surpass the competition. We can research and build lists for any industry and job title no matter how specific and uncommon it may be.
3. With most databases and software tools, it is an accepted fact that data accuracy rates are between 60% to 80%. This eventually leads to at least a 5% bounce rate on your email marketing campaigns. But our custom approach allows us to provide replacement contacts, in case a person changes his job during your campaign. We ensure 0 BOUNCE RATE and no wastage on your email marketing spend.
4. While ACCURACY is the hallmark of data research services, we are also very cost effective in the long run, since you pay only for successful contacts.
5. Custom research partners give you FLEXIBILITY like no other database or software tool can. We provide flexibility in terms of pricing as well as sourcing of niche data, with consent.
6. CONSENT and COMPLIANCE are very important factors which data partners provide. We provide single and double opt-ins along with GDPR compliant lists.

If the factors listed above coincide with what your organisation prioritises in its marketing and sales goals, then a custom research partner like Ascentrik Research is the best choice for you.

Email Marketing and Cold Calling Done Right

The right email marketing and cold calling starts with the right prospect list. When your b2b database is fresh and updated with accurate contact details, your teams are more likely to turn prospects into leads.?

We know that emailing or calling a person who doesn’t wish to be called is an ineffective method of selling. That means selling will be much more successful if you have prior consent of the person you have reached out to. Consent marketing, also understood by many as permission-based marketing, is highly beneficial to customer or client acquisition. Although the two terms seem to mean the same, consent marketing tackles the unaddressed aspects of permission marketing.?

The term permission marketing was coined by Seth Godin, back in 1999 and its definition is pretty straightforward: a type of marketing that focuses on getting consumers’ permission to receive promotional messages. However, permission isn’t always stated specifically and unequivocally, while the whole point of consent-based marketing stands on the legal definition of consent, which clearly has to be stated and understood by the customer.

Single and double opt-ins are the two levels of consent that many b2b data providers offer. A single opt-in means a user gives his permission only once, but double opt-ins require a second level of confirmation. Lastly, in order to conduct consent-based marketing properly, documented consent is essential. It allows you to demonstrate compliance and protect yourself from liability.?

Thus, obtaining consent through single and double opt-ins seems to be the best method so far in generating a b2b database for email marketing and cold calling.

To know more about how the specific criteria of data accuracy, targeted niche data, and pricing affect the effectiveness of your data provider, visit this article. Here we also evaluate various data providers on the market.

To understand how Ascentrik Research can partner with your company to give you all the email marketing and cold calling data you need, visit us here