Author Details
Vinay Mehendi
Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.
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Best Practices To Build Prospect List
Table of Contents
Building a list on a platform is as easy as it gets. That is not the discussion topic here. Hence, best practices to build a list are compiled based on the tasks that you perform on that list.
You are making the list so that
1. You can outreach to them using email, linkedin, and cold calling.
2. You can share the list with Inside Sales or Sales Reps.
A list in itself is of use only when it has a communication copy (email copies, linkedin copy) with it. Hence, a list should be decided based on the positioning segment that you do target in the copy. One does not have a final copy of communication but a definitive idea about the pitch will help you make a good list.
A communication copy evolves with time. The more the time you spend talking and emailing, the more you refine it. It is also possible that your list gets refined over time. In fact, that is one objective of doing outreach campaigns anyway.
An ideal prospect list is one that has ONLY one customer persona in it. Now, one might ask – What is a customer persona ?
You might find varying definitions of customer persona. For our discussion, we will define customer persona using data.
An ideal list of prospects should have following data in it:
Account Firmographics
Account Firmographics is just another name for company data.
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Industry
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Revenue
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Employee Count
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Headquarter
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Company Description
A list is good when there are limited changes in these four data points. These data points are the most common data points in a list. Some businesses might require other data points in the basic list. That is a discussion topic for another article.
For example, one of the rules can be that a list will either have enterprise prospects or small customers but not both. This is an example. Your customer definition will define these rules.
Contact List
A contact list should have following data points:
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First name (Better if it is separate so that you can use it as dynamic field in CRM)
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Last name
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Designation/Role (Better if it is separate so that you can identify the main buyer separately)
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Seniority (better if it is separate from Role so that you can filter it)
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Email Address
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Linkedin URL (always ask for Linkedin URL, it increases data accuracy).
Here comes the best part. This is what you generally get on all platforms. Here are additional data points that can make your data gold.
Premium Data in Contact List
These three data points will help you get great open rates in your marketing campaigns. If data is old, you can get it done through email verification APIs. If data is new and you do have these data points, then you can use them as it is.
Now, here comes the big revelation. Data providers provide you both. You can insist the vendor provide you the status when you get the data subscription. Email verification can be done every 3 months.
Conclusion: A Target list is composed of 1. Account Firmographics 2. Contact List. These two items should go everywhere when you take the data from to the CRM or to the campaign tool. This would allow you to do great analysis as well as segmentation.
Enrichment Fields
Detailed list of enrichment fields is provided here: Enrichment Fields
Intent Data
Role of intent data has always been discussed with interest. We cover hiring based intent in this article. Every marketer should look for intent based on their industry. Hiring based intent is valid for 3-4 months or more. It takes 3-4 months for a newcomer to allocate funds. Hence, new hires within the last 6 months is a good point to start.
