Did you resolve to take the plunge into email marketing in 2009? If so, you need a good email list. Finding an email list is easy, but finding clean, qualified, effective email list is much more difficult. To ease the challenge, here are five questions that will help you build a more effective email list.

1. Is the list targeted to your prospects?

One of the first steps in a marketing campaign is to identify your prospects. Does this list specifically target your prospects? How do you know? For business-to-business (B2B) sales we identify target prospects at two levels – target accounts, or companies, and target contacts, people within each target account.

First identify the target accounts. For example, if you are selling transportation services then you want to target companies that handle physical goods. Use

• industry codes such as SIC or NAICS to identify target companies; and
• company sales to identify companies with the size that fits your services.

If you cannot get exact sales numbers for the company, you can usually find a sales estimate or a sales range. Even an employee count can help you estimate if the company is suitable for your services.

When your service is limited to a territory, use geography to narrow your target list. If you sell transportation services on the west coast of the US, then identify companies that ship in that transit lane.

Second, identify the target contacts within each account. Which people at an account use your services; approve purchases of your services? Use function and level to identify these contacts.

For your west coast transportation business, maybe the Manager or Director of West Coast Logistics uses your services and the General Manager or VP of Operations approves the initial contract. Depending on the size of your target, C-level executives (CEO, CFO, and COO) may not be involved with your contract unless it is especially large or mission critical. That means that the levels you want to target are Manager, Director, and VP. The functions you want to target are operations, logistics, shipping, transportation, and deployment. These people want to learn about your services.

Does the list contain your targets? Now that you can describe your targets specifically, you can tell your list provider exactly what you want – company sales, company industry, company location, employee level and employee function. Don’t assume or accept assurances, instead get a sample of the list. Do the companies and titles match your specifications? Do they match your targets?

2. Is the list current?

Job changes are accelerating. Senior level executives stay at a job less than three years, on average. With the recession driving significant layoffs and downsizing, many more emails will be obsolete in 2009.

• How does your list provider update its email lists?
• When was each email used last? Did it bounce?

The provider should have this information for you.

Use your list sample to test the emails. Send individual emails to a large test group, and track the responses yourself. Does your bounce rate correspond to the rate promised by the list provider?

3. Is the list complete?

For B2B sales, every email data record should contain this information.

Target Contacts	Target Accounts
·  Full Name ·  Full Title ·  Email ·  Direct Telephone ·  Mailing Address ·  Contact Level ·  Contact Function	·  Company Name ·  Company Address ·  Main Telephone ·  Annual Sales ·  Number of Employees ·  Industries

If the sample from your list provider is missing any of these data elements ask why, but don’t hesitate to find a different list provider if the provider can’t supply the missing data.

Email Quality Counts. All email addresses are not the same. For business emails, you should demand a personal prefix and business domain. For instance, john.severinsen@ibmus.com is far better than severinsenfamily@yahoo.com for business communications.

Examine each email in detail. Is the email prefix personal, and does it match the person’s name? For our friend John Severinsen, the email prefix should be some variation of his name—j.severinsen, jseverinsen, severinj, etc. Look out for prefixes like sales@, info@, and nospam@. Not only will you get no response from these emails, but they may land you on a spam filter list.

Examine the email domain. Is it a business domain or an email provider? Do not send any business emails to email provider domains such as aol.com, yahoo.com, msn.com, gmail.com, pacbell.net, Comcast.net, or other email service providers. That is the fastest route to getting on an email black list.4.

Does “Opt-in” matter?

Yes, opt-in counts, but only in one situation—when the person opts-in to your email list. This “direct” opt-in is extremely valuable to you, and only to you.

Indirect opt-in, where the person opted-in to another list, say for the Modern Logistics magazine, that does not mean the person opted-in to receive email from you. Your list provider will show you the text in their email service agreement where their subscribers agreed to “accept occasional email communications from affiliates…” By buying that list you become a licensed affiliate, but the recipient just does not care. You have probably clicked your agreement to a few of these opt-in lists yourself. If the email is unwanted or not appropriate, it gets deleted at best or even reported as spam. Third party opt-in simply does not provide any value for you as a list purchaser.

5. Does size matter?

Does each recipient of your emails care how many other people received that email? Would your sales increase if you could email to one billion people in China? Good targeting and quality content are much more important than list size. Ideally you want to contact everyone within your target market and not a single person outside your target market. That’s the right size. When you focus your efforts on targeting and content quality, your market and your email list will grow naturally.

6. Test, Test, and Test Some More!

You are the only one who can determine the quality and effectiveness of the email lists you purchase. So test each list first, before you buy it. Ask for a sample of 50-100 records. If you already know key contacts at a few current accounts or target companies, ask your provider for samples from those companies.

Look closely at each email record. See if your contacts appear in the samples from companies you know.  Are any data fields blank? Any obvious errors in data format, such as 4-digit zip codes, misspelled cities or states? Any suspicious patterns in the data?

Examine the emails. Any bad email prefixes or email domains? Any illegal characters? Any bad email formats? Any email provider domains? Does the email prefix correspond to the person’s name?

Send some individual emails. Send personal, individual emails to the people. Track the results. Call them after sending the email. Does the telephone number ring? Is it the right person? Did they receive your email? After you test out 100 email data records this way, you will know the quality of the list. And you may even make a sale!

Contrary to promotional hype, successful email campaigns require significant effort to make them pay off. The key point to remember is that quality gives you more bang for your buck than quantity.

Best wishes for your email success in 2009,
Richard Barrett

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under Business info, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: email marketing, Richard Barrett
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.