While there have been plenty of blogs published on the subject of company databases becoming obsolete and outdated, the fact remains that they are still a widely-used tool in sales and marketing. In fact, in recent years the demand for affordable customer contact lists has seen a growing number of providers appearing, which unfortunately has also lead to many subpar vendors entering the market.
With more and more companies looking for customer data on a tight budget, cheap vendors such as EmailDataPro are becoming more popular. These providers promise millions of business emails for as little as $100, but the reality is usually very disappointing, with low quality and incomplete data becoming the result, and affecting the company's growth and credibility in the process.
In order to help companies avoid buying data from untrustworthy sellers, we've put together this list showing exactly how using bad data can affect your company.
7 facts you can’t afford to ignore:
-
Poor data increases email bounce rates: Buying and sending one million emails may be easy, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing for your campaigns. If you're using cheap data you're likely to see a high bounce rate within minutes of clicking send; it could be as high as 60% - that's 600,000 emails that haven't reached potential customers. In contrast, reputable providers are those that are able to guarantee a bounce rate of 10% or less, saving you time and money.
-
Poor data destroys your email delivery: Another disadvantage of poor data is the fact you're likely to lose your credibility when it comes to email marketing. Email marketing is a great channel to start conversation, but if your domain is blocked by an ISP, your email deliverability will be poor. This will have a big detrimental effect on your future campaigns, and getting it back on track can be a long-winded process, whereby you'll need to improve your domain reputation over time.
-
Poor data doesn’t convert to paid clients: If you send messages about a “Hosting Promotion” to contacts who work in HR, for example, you may never convert or get paid clients. You see, if you want to have sales (not clicks), then you need the right audience who are open to new products, which in return will generate sales.
-
Poor data generates almost zero engagement: If a high number of your emails bounce, or are automatically delivered to the spam folder, we can assume you'll have a pretty dire level of engagement. Obviously, the whole point of your campaign is to get your messages seen by the right people, so by using bad quality data you essentially make all of your marketing efforts redundant.
-
Poor data will waste your ad budget: If you've already uploaded the email database to Facebook Audience, LinkedIn Audience or Google Adwords Audience, don't presume you'll have a CTR of 2%. To have a CTR over 1%, you need to make sure that the audience you bought are in your target industry and are in the search mode for your product. This way, your marketing campaign will fit at the right time for the right reason.
-
Poor data means negative reviews: If someone receives emails not related to their needs and interests, there's every chance they'll become frustrated and will write a negative review on Facebook, Twitter, Google or another review network. Instead, it would be more profitable to send 1000 messages to potential clients who are actually in need of your product, than to 1mil contacts who don't even know how to manage a Facebook Ad Campaign.
-
Poor data will reduce company reputation: The more you provide a valuable service to your clients, the more promotion you'll get in the form of referrals from past clients. But what happens when you send a million emails to the wrong audience? Most likely a lot of blocks, spam reports and a downturn in your brand's reputation.
Buying company contact lists is easy, but generating leads is so hard that very few companies succeed here. However, if companies are willing to spend more in order to purchase from reputable providers who regularly update and validate the data they hold, you can avoid these seven pitfalls of low grade data. Yes, buying quality data is expensive, but quality data brings a much better chance of engaging leads and securing sales.
