Although the lion’s share of the attention in developing marketing campaigns is spent on the nature of the offer and the associated verbiage, most successful marketing professionals understand that success or failure will ultimately be based on the list used for the campaign. Yes, garbage in will lead to garbage out!
Companies I talk to tend to fall into three categories:
- Those that have been developing a set of lists over decades: these companies understand the power of developing different lists for different interest levels by title, geography, business versus technical, product (or product category) versus industry, etc. and are constantly taking steps to refresh information and new names.
- Those who have only developed one master list with no differentiation on the types of offers individuals are interested: these companies have the raw materials but may find inconsistent success rates due to the lack of targeting information tracked. This is especially impactful when statistics show that your marketing database will degrade by 25% annually.
- Those who are just starting out and are faced with building a list from scratch: Where do you start? Buy/rent, build/steal? Most will try to buy or rent the initial list but they invariably find it not worth the expense. Some try to borrow (steal?) from partners or competitor websites while others are willing to do the hard steps necessary to build the right list from the ground up.
Building a list takes patience and perseverance. Build a set of lists takes even more tenacity and creativity. Doing so though does pay huge dividends in the end. Hubspot published a blog on “25 Ways To Grow Your Email Marketing List” and you can find some very insightful information there. Another blogger named Ben Settle offers 5 steps for “How To Build A First Class Email List In 30 Days – From Scratch” which would also be worth your time to read.
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