That’s why, before I send our clients a list, I do a separate scrub of my own to make sure all criteria has been met and there isn’t any confusion. Here are the questions I ask prior to importing a list for a new client.
1. Did you get as specific as you could with your criteria for a data search?
What I have found is: the more specific the criteria, the better the list, especially when it comes to job titles. If we have a client who targets CFOs as their desired point of contact, there is also typically someone below that title who handles the more specific job functions associated with the client’s product. For example, VP of Financial Planning and Analysis may be more informative than CFO if the technology is more applicable to the former.
Expanding on list criteria, it is also important to be prepared with criteria the client may not have thought to include. Are there specific states that we should assign priority? Is there a certain technology they should have in place to qualify them as a fit? I think about it like my old job as a seating hostess at a restaurant… it’s always easier to remove members of a party from a reservation at the last minute than it is to add. (You try squeezing 12 people at a table meant for 8 on a Saturday night.). It’s the same with lists; there is nothing worse than acquiring a large batch of data and then having to add additional criteria afterwards.
2. Did you get what you asked for?
Once criteria has been covered, the next question I ask is whether I got what I asked for. It’s as simple as that. When I look at the industries, do they match up with the ones I requested? Same goes for titles, revenue, employee size, etc. The list is worth nothing if certain targets can be qualified out immediately as “not a fit” based on a silly criteria error.
3. How many target companies vs. contacts exist on this list?
This one I find very important to a successful campaign. Ideally, when kicking off a project, I want 500 target companies spread across 1500 contacts, with 3 contacts per target company (of varying level, of course; click here to see why). I know that if the distribution is way off I need to go back to the drawing board and revise the search. You need a good sized, diversified list before kicking off a campaign.
4. Was this list properly suppressed against a do-not-call list?
One of the challenges with acquiring B2B data from a variety of sources is that they may all label an organization name differently (i.e Home Depot vs The Home Depot or Ann Taylor vs. AnnTaylor Stores Corporation), making suppression all the more difficult depending on the format in which the do-not-call (DNC) companies were delivered. We use a few different strategies to attack this. If URLs were given, it is often easier to scrub by field over basic company/organization name. We also have a data team here at AG who can manually cross-reference both lists to ensure we won’t be contacting any DNC targets. The best practice always is to also provide the client with a preview of the data for final approval.
What other questions would you ask about your new list before prospecting it?
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