The key challenges of list management

• Accuracy – people change jobs and companies all the time so your contact database is continually obsolete. How do you ensure it as current as can be? Do you eliminate duplicate records and outdated email addresses?
• Compliance -- Federal CAN/SPAM laws require you to keep a list of opt-out contacts, people who have unsubscribed from your newsletter. You face stiff financial penalties if you “spam” a customer who told you to unsubscribe.
• Normalization – do you have multiple spreadsheets from different marketing campaigns (e.g. trade show, email blast, whitepaper syndication, webinars, seminars, etc.)? Even if you import them into Salesforce.com, do you “normalize” so you can compare leads that were labeled differently? For instance, how do you compare leads marked “hot”, “A” or “8 on 10 scale.”
• Targeting – do you consistently filter out unwanted subscribers such as students, consultants, non-target countries, competitors, etc. so that you’re not wasting money on irrelevant recipients?
• Relevance – do you keep track of what content you sent them so your offer (whitepaper, webcast, promotion, etc) is based on what the prospect desires now?
• Synchronization – is your Marketing database synchronized with your sales force automation or CRM system? If it’s not, you are not leveraging the most up to date information in your sales database nor are you smoothly, quickly passing along sales ready leads for the sales team.
• Stratification – do you segment or “stratify” you database so you can easily distinguish your “A” contacts versus the “B” or “C” based on some established criteria. If not, you’re not treating your best contacts with the extra special attention they deserve.
• Reporting – if your CEO or VP of Marketing asks for a snapshot of the quantity and quality of contacts in your marketing database, could you show her on the spot?

The benefits of addressing these challenges

• Higher ROI of marketing spend on communications and lead generation initiatives because you’re targeting fewer, higher quality contacts rather than “spraying” all contacts indiscriminately.
• Nurture leads along by providing enticing, relevant content as they go from first contact to eventually buying your product.
• Leverage your contact database more effectively by putting to work all contacts in your database rather than the tiny fraction of “hot” leads.
• All of this adds up to better brand awareness, lead conversion, and more sales

Two options to consider

Build and maintain in-house – in our experience you should expect to allocate one person, a marketing analyst, at least half time to ensure the database is current and your whole process of lead nurturing is running smoothly. You’ll likely consume a quarter to half a person in IT who will support the data integration, reporting, and ongoing needs of the marketing analyst and management team. In-house may have the perceived benefit of greater control and security but in reality other more sensitive data is probably already been hosted elsewhere. By keeping in-house, you are also signing up for having to manage change in technologies, data sources, reporting needs, personnel, and process. Plus you’ll likely be frustrated with having to wait for IT to respond to marketing requests.

Outsource to a marketing automation vendor -- My bias is to outsource the management of your marketing list or database just as your company probably already does for its sales and customer support functions. There are a number of good companies that specialize in marketing databases or “marketing automation”. You can simply hand them your list and they’ll get it setup properly, integrate with the right data sources, deliver beautiful web-based reports, and then run it from then on. You could even have the vendor handle more sophisticated lead nurturing campaigns in which offers are sent to specific audiences based on a set of business rules that you set. Vendors generally offer both software and managed services options to suit your in-house vs. outsourced preferences.

I personally use NetLine Corporation for my Pacifica Group newsletter. But there are other reputable companies too like Eloqua, Digital Impact (now known as Axciom), and Responsys. I recommend you create a request for proposal (RFP) using the criteria mentioned above in the challenges section.

If you’d like an objective assessment of your marketing database(s) and lead nurturing process, give us a call and we’d be happy to do review your environment and give you a tailored recommendation.

© Sridhar Ramanathan Pacifica Group

I really like all the tips here in managing your in-house list.

One of the caveats customers need to be aware of when diving into the marketing automation pool is that you cannot automate a process that doesn't exist. Companies like yours present a valuable service in helping people figure out the flow of information into and out of marketing. Reporting is virtualy impossible if you haven't laid out your plan before you go buy some technology.

Also, without a process plan in place, you're much more likely to purchase the wrong products, or build the wrong database in house. I once waited a year for IT to free up resources to fix a database problem we could have forseen if we had spent more time planning our workflow before we began the project.

Posted by: Steve Gershik | July 10, 2006 11:49 AM