Data-driven marketing: How well do you know your database?

Did you know that businesses who use data-driven strategies drive five to eight times as much ROI as businesses who don’t? And data-driven marketing is not just for B2C companies - 93% of B2B marketers say data-driven marketing is enables them to achieve important marketing objectives.

Yet according to Deloitte Digital, fewer than 43% of businesses say they are capable of customer insights or analytics. That means less than half of all marketing teams have a real understanding of their database.

If you’re planning your B2B marketing strategy for 2022 and wondering what tactics to implement to improve your ROI, make 2022 the year for B2B data-driven marketing! Understand why data-driven marketing should be the key focus of your B2B marketing strategy next year, how to go about it and what benefits you could reap as a business.

What Is B2B Data-driven Marketing?

B2B data-driven marketing relies on accurate and detailed client information and data to inform marketing decisions and strategies. Instead of looking to generic market trends or depending on gut instinct, B2B marketers analyse their client data to understand needs and behaviors specific to their client base and in turn use these create tailored marketing strategies.

What Benefits Can B2B Marketers Reap From Data-driven Marketing?

Better Targeting

Starting from the first stage of the marketing funnel, data enables you to target the audience that is most likely to convert into a paying client more precisely. This is especially important in B2B marketing as it typically involves channels that are ultimately more costly than in B2C marketing - think direct mail and events. The more your buyer persona is off-the-mark, the more likely it is you’ll have wasted thousands of marketing dollars trying to reach the wrong target. Just imagine the wasted print costs & postage…

INFORMED CAMPAIGN CHOICES

Moving down the funnel to consideration, data helps to inform your marketing campaign decisions. The more information you have on your clients’ past behavior - what they respond well to and what they don’t - the more likely your campaign choices will be in line with your clients’ preferences and the higher the rate of engagement the campaign will have. At Lighthouse/Ameribase Digital our data is sourced from purchases, intent signals, online engagements, self-reported data, registrations & form fills so we have a wealth of data ready for B2B marketers looking to try out behavioral targeting.

INCREASED PERSONALIZATION

With data-driven marketing it’s also easier to run personalized marketing campaigns. If you’re not sure why you should be using personalization in your B2B marketing campaigns, just take Zenefits as an example. The HR management company wanted to improve the ROI of their paid social campaigns and tried out personalized ad campaigns. The results were significant: Zenefits achieved a 20% increase in conversion rate. If you’re not using personalization in your campaigns, maybe it’s time you started!

What Do B2B Marketing Teams Require To Launch Their B2B Data-driven Strategy?

If you’re sold on the benefits of data-driven marketing and are wondering where to start, you’ll need to first carry out an audit of your client data. Client data includes CRM data, email campaign data, social interactions data, web analytics data & purchase data.

The first challenge will be to locate this data and then to try to bring it all together in one place for analysis. Unfortunately, due to data silos, some 40% of organizations indicate that scattered information and limited data visibility hinder their sales and marketing activity. A key focus for many B2B businesses should be to break down these silos to ensure they have a single customer view they can easily access.

Another challenge will most likely occur once marketing teams complete their analysis: they may find that their CRM data is seriously out-of-date. In fact, as a rule of thumb the average CRM data decays at a rate of 30% per year. If marketing teams only have inaccurate, old data to hand, their plans for a data-driven marketing approach could be at risk.

How Can Lighthouse/Ameribase Digital Help With Your Data-Driven Marketing in 2022?

Achieve Reach without Sacrificing Quality

Lighthouse/Ameribase Digital allows you to achieve both quality and scale in your B2B marketing campaigns. We have hundreds of on-demand B2B audiences, segmented by company size; industry; sales volume; job role; and job level including C-Suite, Directors & Management.

Our data has been validated multiple times by independent evaluator TruthSet and each time it was found to be amongst the most accurate when compared to other leading data providers. In fact, in Q3 2021 our small business owner data was deemed 50% more accurate than that of other leading data providers.

If reach is your key focus, try our Business Audience Reach offering. With Business Audience Reach, you can receive all of a contact's identifiers in one file including business and personal email, business and home address, business and home phone number. On average we match 2 million B2B email records a month.

Know Your Customer

Maybe your data quality and reach is sufficient but your lacking in client insights. Again, we can help here. Try our Data Append service to add crucial new or missing fields of information to your CRM that will enable you to include more personalization in your next campaign.

B2B Data for the modern Workplace

The days of 9 to 5 in the office are gone and the lines between home-life and work-life have blurred considerably. Statistics show that more than 4.7 million people work remotely at least half the time in the United States, not to mention the effects caused by the pandemic. We can help you reach these remote workers via our Business at Home offering. We have for example 448MM verified email addresses of business professionals working from home and 500MM digital device IDs. If you want to run a direct mail campaign, it’s still possible thanks to our database of Business At Home home addresses.

CONTACT US FOR SUPPORT

If you’d like support with your B2B data-driven marketing strategy for 2022, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We recognize that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic poses numerous challenges and headaches and we believe arming B2B marketing teams with quality and accurate data is the best way to enable them to succeed.

Talk to us today about your specific data needs >

Is Your B2B Campaign Doomed to Fail?

According to Dun and Bradstreet, in a 60 minute window based on a eight hour day, 211 businesses will move, 429 business telephone numbers will change or be disconnected, 743 new businesses will open their doors, 12 businesses will file for bankruptcy and 284 Chief Executive Officer or owner changes will occur.

Just this week, here at Lighthouse List, we received direct mail from a national large cable brand and a large financial brand to two ex-employees, one who left the company nine years ago and another seven years ago, as well as another piece of mail for a business who moved out of our office nine years ago and is now probably out of business. In fact, we’ve received in total over 50 bad letters in 3 weeks from the cable brand to the same people every week as well as 6 bad letters out of 9 from the financial brand.

Yet this is the reality of B2B marketing. If you’re not taking regular action to update your data, you could be wasting your marketing budget, which can become extremely costly, especially for B2B campaigns that often rely heavily on direct mail campaigns.

Return to Sender

So what exactly can a company do to improve the state of their B2B marketing database?

First of all, marketing teams should be using returned mail to update their campaign lists. The same way that email marketing platforms make a note of hard bounces and remove these from email lists, marketing teams need to do the same with their direct mail lists.

Yes, it might seem tedious but with tools like business card scanners, it’s becoming increasingly quicker and more efficient to update your CRM using physical data. And, given the additional costs that go into direct mail - printing & postage - updating your direct mail lists is arguably key to ensuring your ROI.

Prioritize Recency

Once you’ve cleaned up your CRM using returned mail, take a look at the rest of your database. When was the last time it was updated? Stale data will most certainly result in a low-performing campaign. As a rule of thumb the average CRM data decays at a rate of 30% per year, though some say this can even increase to 70%. If you’re planning a future campaign, be ruthless and only select data this is fresh and up-to-date.

De-dupe If Required

If you work with contact lead forms, you may also find that you’ve been inadvertently creating duplicate contacts within your CRM. In a report by Integrate examining the data quality of more than 775,000 leads, 15% of the leads were duplicates. Consider using a data cleansing tool that can clean up your database in minutes without the need to manually search for duplicates.

Data Linkage For Higher Quality

Another possibility to test the accuracy of your database is to use linkage. Using data from other channels, such as email, marketers can verify and validate their data to ensure maximum accuracy. This is an exercise we do as standard at Lighthouse List, using cross-channel data sourcing to be sure of the quality of the data we hold.

Work with a B2B Data Partner

Taken a hacksaw to your CRM and need to increase your reach again? According to research from Demand Gen Report, 77% of those surveyed state they have a data acquisition strategy in place, yet only 16% of companies rated their data acquisition strategy as solid. With Lighthouse List, you can achieve both accuracy and scale! Lighthouse List only provides quality and accurate data, ensuring your B2B marketing yields results.

Our data has been validated multiple times by independent evaluator TruthSet and each time it was found to be amongst the most accurate when compared to other leading data providers. Our strength lies in our cross-channel data sourcing and verification process. Our data has at least 5 matches from different data sources ensuring maximum data accuracy. Plus our B2B data is truly multi-channel and available for direct mail, email, telemarketing, cookie and IP address targeting.

Choose one of our proprietary segments or have us build you a custom audience based on company size, industry, sales volume, job level and job title.

Get In Touch

For more info on our B2B data, get in touch with us to discuss your exact needs.

The Harsh Truth Marketers Must Face About Data Inaccuracy

What is the size of your annual marketing campaign budget? Take the total number and now remove 70%. Looks rather smaller now, doesn’t it? What if we were to tell you that figure is a true representation of the budget you have dedicated to reaching your target audience?

The Stark Cost of Bad Quality Data

The trouble with some marketing departments is that they view each channel as a separate line item (we have X for direct mail and Y for display), without seeing their marketing budget as a whole. This means that when a cost affects their entire marketing budget, such as, say, marketing data, they are unaware of the full effect it has overall.

It’s a truth which makes a lot of marketers feel uncomfortable but the fact is up to 70% of most third-party sourced data is inaccurate, according to independent data evaluator Truthset. In order to understand the true cost of inaccurate marketing data, marketers need to stop thinking in terms of line items in their budget and instead consider how bad data affects nearly every aspect of their campaigns. Let’s take a minute to think about that in real terms:

You’re running an email campaign - how much budget have you wasted?

If the average list cost is $100 per thousand records and assuming you purchase a hundred thousand records for $10,000, it is likely 70% of those records are inaccurately categorised and therefore out of your target audience. That means you could be wasting $7,000 on data records that are completely irrelevant to your campaign.

You’re running a direct mail campaign - how much budget have you wasted?

The cost is even more stark with a direct mail campaign. Yes, you may have wasted $7,000 on bad data but that’s not the end of it. You would also waste another $40,600 on postage, sending direct mail to 70,000 irrelevant addresses at 58 cents a pop. That’s $47,600 wasted, without even taking into account the wasted print costs.

You’re running a display campaign - how much budget have you wasted?

It’s a similar situation for marketers running display campaigns. With media usually costing around 85% of the spend, you could be racking up yet another cost due to inaccurate data.

Breaking Down Marketing Silos

So what can be done to ensure all of that marketing budget is not wasted?

First of all, in order to understand the full effect bad quality data is having on your marketing output, make sure your marketing department is sharing information across teams, i.e. the email team needs to know what’s going on with the direct mail team and the mobile team.

This sharing of data and information will ultimately lead to a breaking down of silos, an increased visibility across the department and the possibility to run true multichannel campaigns. According to SAS, multichannel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers do and a survey by PFL showed marketers who use 4-6 channels in their multichannel campaigns report the best response rates. And the greater the visibility and access to information on response, conversions etc, the better your multichannel campaigns will be in the future.

Working with A Trusted Data Partner

We also believe marketing teams need to prioritize data accuracy above all else. That means working with a data partner that puts data quality first. At Lighthouse List, we do just that:

• Firstly, we work with independent data evaluator, Truthset, which regularly validates our data sets to ensure data quality and accuracy. We’re pleased to report that our most recent data evaluation from Q3 2021 had us tied first in data accuracy for age data, for multicultural data, for income data and for pet ownership data. We also come out on top for identifying married consumers.

• Secondly, our data is sourced from a network of carefully vetted and privacy-compliant partners providing online engagements, brand signals, in-market shopping behaviors, location data, purchase transactions, registrations and form fills, surveys, voter registration, SDKs and mobile apps.

• Thirdly, we have a blend of first, second, third party data and our data is truly multichannel. Whether you’re looking for cookies, MAIDs, HEMS, IP addresses, CTV IDS, postal addresses or email addresses, we can help you to run a high-performing multichannel campaign.

• Finally, nearly 50% of our PII data has at least ten matches from different sources, whilst 50% our phone data has at least two matches. What's more, we link our data to three billion transactions daily, ensuring maximum accuracy. Our extensive cross-validation and cross-channel sourcing process guarantees a high level of data accuracy in our consumer audiences.

So if you’d like to cut your waste, speak to us about your data needs today. Try our 3000+ on-demand audiences for your next marketing campaign or we can build you a custom audience, ready within 72 hours.

Privacy & Performance: Finding balance for your data-driven marketing campaigns

The key to successful data-driven marketing campaigns is balance.

Last year, as we were gearing up to 2020, the usual round of predictions for the decade ahead came to the fore. The key prediction for the business world? That if the 2010s was the decade in which we saw the rise of data, the 2020s would be the decade in which companies needed to take data privacy seriously.

Navigating an Onslaught of Privacy Regulation

Certainly there is now a wave of regulation that US companies need to adhere to: from CCPA in California, to Nevada’s Senate Bill 220, to Maine’s privacy law, not to mention to a host of proposed bills from other states including New York, Massachusetts and Maryland. 

Not surprisingly, privacy compliance for some businesses must seem like walking through a minefield -  they obviously still need to continue to reach out to potential customers for marketing purposes but they also now need to comply with an increasing onslaught of privacy regulation.

Luckily, the privacy compliance burden can be greatly reduced by working with a data agency who knows how to navigate the ever-changing privacy landscape. At Lighthouse List, data privacy is something we take extremely seriously and compliance is always our first and foremost priority.

Finding Balance Between Privacy & Performance

We recognise your need to communicate with your target audience. That’s why for us, the key is to find balance:

• We provide consumer and business data at scale, including 240MM consumers & 40MM business contacts.

• Our demographic data enables you to target your audience with precision, enabling you to run better performing campaigns. Choose from age, gender, ethnicity, geography, income, marital status, presence of children, homeowner or renter.

• We adhere to all local privacy regulations, so you can focus on the things you do best, like running your business.

Our Tips for Running Better Marketing Campaigns

1. Look for a data provider who can provide you with accuracy and scale. 

2. Ensure the data provider you’re working with is privacy compliant.

3. Make sure the data you’re using is updated regularly - the older the data, the less accurate it’s likely to be.

4. Use what targeting options are available to you - if you can segment by demographics, do it! If you can target by keyword, try it! The more targeted you can make your campaigns, the more likely they will succeed.

Whatever your data challenges, at Lighthouse List we’re sure to be able to help. We have over 25 years’ experience helping companies to run data-driven marketing campaigns, making us one of the most reliable data providers in the business.

Contact us to discuss your needs today >>

Covid 19 Challenges: Targeting the American Workforce At Home

Covid 19 has brought many challenges including the need to work from home

Amongst the many challenges currently faced by American businesses as they come to terms with the shock Covid 19 has wrought on their working lives is that of targeting the American workforce at home. What initially started out as a temporary measure has for many now become the norm, with a number of US companies announcing that their workforce will stay at home until at least mid 2021. For businesses, particularly those in the B2B sector, the question arises: how do I target my contacts while they’re working from home?

Count on Your Trusted Data Provider for Advice

The answer comes down to the data you have at hand and, in particular, the data provider you’re working with. You want one who has the experience and the know-how to navigate you through these turbulent times. We’ve been asked for advice from own own clients and, as a data provider with over 25 years of experience, our response has been:

1. Don’t discount email marketing

Your contacts are working from home but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped working full stop! They’re still checking their emails and research has shown that email engagement has been trending upwards and unsubscribe rates downwards during the pandemic. If your email data isn’t up to scratch, we have over 40 million business contacts available that can be segmented as follows:

• Company Size/ Number of Employees

• Industry or SIC Code

• Company Annual Revenue

• Job Title

• Geography

• Women & Minority Owned Businesses

2. Go old-school with snail mail

Yes, it might seem like a blast from the past but direct mail is making a comeback. Seen as more personal than email, direct mail can be extremely effective for marketers looking to engage their audience. And just because your contacts aren’t in the office, doesn’t mean you can’t send them something to land on their doorstep. We can provide the postal data you need to run your next direct mail campaign.

3. Consider social campaigns

According to the New York Times, social media use has shot up since March. For example, there has been a 27% increase in the use of Facebook amongst Americans since the pandemic hit. Your audience could be sitting out there in their homes waiting to engage with your social ads. Lighthouse List has a wealth of phone data, email data & MAIDs, that can be matched to social users for advanced targeting. What’s more, our data can be segmented by interest and demographics to ensure you’re reaching the right prospect.

4. Run a targeted digital ad campaign

If social and email campaigns aren’t enough, there’s always the possibility of running a display or video ad campaign. We have over 750 million cookies that can be segmented to create your ideal custom audience for a hyper-targeted and effective display campaign, plus our CTV data is ideal for running video campaigns.

At Lighthouse List, we know that every company has its own specific data challenges and no one size fits all. Why not get in touch to discuss your needs and see how we can help? Contact us today to discuss your company’s strategy for targeting workers at home.

Winning the Georgia Runoff: The importance of data

The Presidential Election may be over but the work of political organizations continues as they race to get as many Georgians on the voting register as possible in time for the cutoff on December 7.

What’s going on in Georgia?

We’ve been watching what’s going on in Georgia with bated breath at Lighthouse List. Essentially, Georgian State Law requires a Senate candidate to receive at least 50% of the vote in order to be confirmed. So far, neither of the state’s two Republican senators have reached that goal, causing a runoff.

On January 5, Republican Senator David Perdue will face Democrat Jon Ossoff whilst Democrat Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock will be up against Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican. The key dates are for your diary are:

• December 7 - Deadline to register to vote in the federal runoff election

• December 14 - Early voting to begin

• January 5 - Runoff election day

Why is the Georgia Runoff so important?

The stakes couldn’t be higher in Georgia. With President-elect Joe Biden due to take power on January 20, one key question remains: how much power will he be able to wield in Washington to push forward his agenda? Given Democrats’ control of the House, if they also manage to win a majority in the Senate, Biden would largely be in a position to reverse Trump-era policies as he sees fit. Should Republicans, however, manage to hold the Senate, they would have more opportunity to influence Biden’s agenda.

Expect then a hard-fought race ahead, with plenty of campaign dollars spent from organisations across the political spectrum, intent on getting their message heard by the masses.

Where does data come in?

There are two key tasks for political organizations over the new few weeks:

1. Ensure their target audience is registered to vote.

2. Get their message home and encourage their audience to come out to vote for their chosen candidate on election day.

Both of these tasks rely on data - particularly registered voters and non-registered voters. If your Georgian voter database is out of date, you won’t be able to communicate effectively with your audience. Or maybe your voter database only consists of traditional postal data, whilst your rival has access to email data and digital audiences, making them much more agile and efficient in their communications. The result? You could be at a significant disadvantage.

For political organizations who want to level the playing field, they should consider speaking to an experienced data provider, specialised in political audiences, for advice on how to make these few weeks’ of campaigning count. At Lighthouse List, we have a wealth of political audiences based in Georgia ready to license, segmented by political party and by candidate. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GEORGIAN VOTER DATA >>

We’ll help you find the best audience appropriate for your campaign needs, including registered voters and non-registered voters.

3 Data Strategies to Boost Campaign Performance

These are indeed unusual times. Schools are closing their doors, restaurants are stacking their chairs, and more Americans are opting to self-quarantine whether they feel ill or not. The Coronavirus is hitting hard and businesses are bracing for impact. Who knows exactly how big of a hit the U.S. economy will take but it's certain that over the next few months, marketers will need to find creative ways to do more with less. 

One quick and easy approach is to pop the hood of your existing marketing campaigns to take a closer look at the data behind driving it. When it comes to digital marketing, data is one of the most important components of any campaign but it's also one of the most overlooked. Before launching your next campaign, consider these three approaches to finding and evaluating the right audience for your campaigns. Consider these three approaches to finding and evaluating quality audiences.

1) Stress-test your existing data providers. 

Data quality in the digital ecosystem varies enormously from one data provider to another. For this reason, it's always important to get the facts about any data you choose to target your campaign. Ask your provider the questions below and see how your opinion of the data you're currently using changes. Or not!

• What's the source of the data? Is it from public records or private? Is it compiled or aggregated? How often is it refreshed? Every provider will be different.

• What action did the consumer take? Did they opt-in for special offers on the publisher's website? Did they purchase a specific product? Did they read similar content online? Knowing the actions consumers take to be included in the segment may help you predict whether they will engage with your message/offer.

• Is the data known or inferred? For example, are these actual buyers of travel insurance (known) or just people who look like travel insurance buyers (inferred). Known data is always best, but inferred, which typically originates from a data model, can also be a considerable source for new prospects.

2) Ask the experts. 

If your provider's sole business is data, chances are they are a wealth of information about best practices in audience targeting and would be more than happy to share their advice. At Lighthouse List, we maintain 3000+ segments alone, making it unrealistic for a media buyer to consider all options from all data providers. But, if you make it standard practice to ask your data provider which audience segments they recommend you use, you're much more likely to target a promising audience. Just paint a detailed picture for the data provider of your ideal audience and KPI goals.

3) Go custom. 

Sometimes custom solutions are the best solutions. If you know exactly what you need in a target audience, ask your data provider to build you a custom audience. Data providers often manage multiple data sets in their portfolio. If given the opportunity, most would be happy to mix and match assets to prepare just the right audience for you. At Lighthouse List, we'll even reserve the audience for your exclusive use across digital and offline channels.

Have a data question? Feel free to contact us >>

We have seen first hand the opportunities that quality data provides and will always be available to help you find your best possible audience.