Today, almost every aspect of a business runs on data. It has become a valuable asset for marketing departments, too, to ensure the success of their advertising and promotional campaigns. This is why marketers are obsessed with tracking and analyzing information.
However, two-thirds of these professionals lack confidence in their data. Holding a large volume of details does not mean much if it is inaccurate. Contact data, in particular, could be worthless when quality is compromised. But how can you access high-quality, accurate contact information for marketing success? Let’s explore this further.
Contact Data: Why Quality Matters
Contact data refers to information about your existing and potential customers. It can include names, addresses, contact numbers, email addresses, social media, age, profession, industry, workplace, education, or any other data point your business may require to launch an effective marketing campaign.
The accuracy of these details is vital for several reasons:
- With inaccurate data, you could be promoting the wrong solution to a customer or communicating with an audience who may never purchase your product. In other words, you are wasting your marketing budget.
- Launching, monitoring, and improving marketing programs is a time-consuming exercise. When campaigns are based on poor-quality data, your team could waste a significant number of productive hours on these activities. And time is money in a competitive market.
- A simple error in an email address or phone number could result in your team reaching out to someone who has no interest in your product. As a result, you could end up annoying those individuals with your unsolicited emails, calls, or messages. Needless to say, antagonizing people is bad for business and your company reputation.
- With high-quality data, you can expect better outcomes from your campaigns. For example, when you target the right prospects, you can improve the accuracy of your communications, increase conversions and sales, and enjoy a higher return on your marketing investments.
- When you have accurate customer data, you are able to identify the exact needs of prospects and provide information and solutions that serve their individual requirements. According to Think with Google, 61% of consumers expect personalization. Tailoring engagements can dramatically improve the customer experience.
- With accurate contact details, you can also segment customers based on a variety of criteria and create high-quality profiles to gain deeper insights into customer needs, attitudes, and behaviors. All these will allow you to make more informed decisions. Your ability to make precise, data-backed decisions could even become a competitive advantage.
Clearly, the more accurate your data, the better the outcomes for you and your customers. So, it makes every sense to focus on the quality of your contact information.
Common issues that affect accuracy include:
- Out-of-date data that are no longer valid. This could happen when, for example, a customer moves to a new home or changes their workplace.
- Incomplete information that has certain critical pieces of data points missing.
- Duplicate contacts collected through different platforms and activities. For instance, you could have two separate records under Allan John and A. John for the same contact.
- Contacts with one or more false or incorrect details. This could be the result of a typo when entering information or a deliberate attempt to mislead.
How to Get Accurate Contact Data for Your Marketing Campaigns
The importance of the quality of your contact information could not be stressed further. But how can you access accurate data? Here are our top recommendations.
Company website
The easiest option to collect customer data is often your website. A simple contact form could usually do the trick if you want to encourage visitors to share their details so you could call or email them with more information. This method generates qualified inbound leads who are already interested in your product or business.
But there are also others who may browse your website and leave without making an inquiry. A free trial, white paper, newsletter, gift, or some other attractive reward could incentivize them to share personal details.
Whichever route you take, ensure the data collection process is simple and hassle-free for your site visitors.
Social media
According to DataReportal, 246 million Americans are on social media. The popularity of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar platforms has attracted users from diverse demographic and geographic profiles to connect and engage with millions of others.
But no one wants to connect with anonymous strangers. So, to network, social media users need to share a certain amount of information—from their names and location to personal interests.
This gives you the opportunity to collect a range of personal data. What you can find will obviously vary between social media platforms. LinkedIn, for instance, is an excellent place to track contact information, work and education details, and professional interests.
Lead generating platforms
These sites allow you to search their contact databases to identify potential customers you could target for your marketing campaigns. Leadar, for example, provides multiple search options, including contact name, location, company name, job title, and various other criteria.
The advantage of lead generating platforms is that, apart from collecting individual data, they carry out a number of verifications to confirm data accuracy. They also build profiles by collating relevant pieces of information. This eliminates the need for you to access several sources to get a complete picture of a prospect.
These platforms are also an excellent option for finding additional details about existing contacts in your database. For instance, when you collect names and email addresses from your newsletter subscribers, you can use a lead generating site to find more information about those contacts and improve your database.
But keep in mind that some of these platforms may charge a fee for their services. So, assess your requirements first before subscribing to a paid plan.
Cold lead database vendors
Another option is to purchase databases that match your customer profile. While they may not include too much information about prospects, they are still an easy source to find cold leads.
However, bear in mind that some of these databases may contain inaccurate or unverified data. Therefore, sourcing them from a reputed vendor is important.
Conclusion
Accurate contacts are crucial for the success of your marketing campaigns. Your company website, social media, lead generating platforms, and cold lead database vendors can be excellent sources for uncovering high-quality prospect details. But collecting information itself is not enough; ensure you keep your databases secure with sufficient data protection measures.
