by Will Rotondi
Data is a touchy subject these days, depending on who’s using it. If you’re talking government agencies, you may be tempted to think invasion of privacy. Conversely, when it’s manufacturing or healthcare, big data can do a lot of good for supply chains and diagnoses.
Then you come to the area of email prospecting, and the reactions are often mixed.
There are three reasons for this:
- People are more likely to open an email than they are to pick up a phone. This makes it easier for you to reach a wider range of customers online than by dialing them one at a time.
Pictured above: all of the items that get more use around your office before your phone system.
- You need data on your ideal prospects in order to email them. Besides their names and contact information, it’s also helpful to know their job functions within their respective companies.
- Data is usually very expensive, and has a tendency to be inaccurate. A lot of lists that you can purchase out there come at a hefty price, particularly those that have email addresses. More often than not, they’re old lists: many of those prospects will have moved on from their current position or left the company entirely by the time you get hold of their data.
So you need data, but you can’t trust it. Catch-22?
Don’t purchase their emails. If you have the first name, last name, company name, and website domain, you can use prospecting automation software to find and verify them instead. That way, you can use greater amounts of data, widen your prospecting outreach, and focus your efforts on those who you can verify.
