For many new users of marketing automation tools, one of the biggest challenges is segmenting the CRM database in a way that drives results. We've assembled some simple best practices that you can use to build better campaigns.
The list is not expensive
When you purchase data for your marketing automation campaigns, the data will seem expensive. It is. At a dollar or more per contact name, the cost of the data is very expensive. However, the cost of the data is cheap compared to the cost of actually running your campaigns. Once your sales team starts executing campaigns based on the data, the cost of the campaign and the time invested in the campaign easily outweigh the small cost of the data.
Many people let the cost of the list drive unproductive behaviors - such as asking the sales force to research and input prospects into CRM. This is an incredible waste of money. It does not make sense to ask your sales force to research buyers - they should spend their time on the phone closing.
Titles are confusing
The problem with titles, is, well...they don't really explain anything. For example, a vice-president level title generally refers to a level within the organization. Unfortunately, in financial services, everyone is a vice-president. In other organizations, a general manager or a director might be the primary decision makers.
When buying lists from magazines, pay attention to how readers are profiled. Many magazines allow readers to select their title from a pre-defined list. While this practice provides continuity and better sorts based on title, it also forces people to bucket themselves incorrectly. For example, a Director of IT could be the person responsible for writing code, building the data center or managing network operations. If you understand the list and understand how people select or input their titles, you gain a better understanding of the list source.
Sorting by proxy
More often than not, deep and accurate "brand specific" data does not exist in a commercially viable list. For example, if you sell identity management software but cannot find customer data for IT decision makers with an interest in identity management, you may be able to sort by proxy. For example, if we know that 75% of all accounting firms with more than 500 employees use Microsoft Exchange, we could focus on accounting as a poor man's substitute for identifying prospects with an interest in identity management.
Size doesn't matter
In the IT market, the size of the organization is less important than the size of the IT organization. Norms exist that provide good rules of thumb based on the industry. Manufacturing, for example, has a relatively low level of IT investment while the financial service industry has a high level of IT investment.
Traditionally, marketers use headcount or gross revenue as a de facto filter. By understanding the difference in IT spend across industries, gross revenue or headcount in combination with your personal expertise and gut instinct can be used as a substitute if IT department headcount is not available.
Who should we exclude?
Prospect identification and CRM segmentation should focus on finding contacts that can be included as well as contacts that should be automatically excluded from searches. For example, by default, all companies should exclude existing customers, existing records and any records outside of existing sales territories. Understanding what should be excluded in a search is just as important as knowing what should be included.
How Many Contacts Per Company?
Within larger companies, there can be multiple functional roles and organizational levels for IT. When buying lists, the role of "IT decision makers" is often cloudy. These individuals can be financial managers, office managers and even controllers. While owning this information can be valuable, it is important that peripheral influencers be properly tagged and labeled within CRM. If your market is IT buyers, the best place to start is with the highest level contact in the IT department. From there, expand your selection to include titles inside operations, data center or even operations, depending on your business.
Don't Get Distracted
We've found that data quality and accuracy on secondary data such as headquarters vs. branch, public vs. private and annual growth rate have very little impact on campaign success. We generally recommend that people starting marketing automation focus their effort elsewhere unless there is a compelling reason to pursue secondary data searches.
Watch your language
How one data broker refers to data is generally different from how other brokers or list sources refer to data. As you evaluate list sources, understand that your language and your broker's language is probably different. For example, some list brokers don't provide the necessary granularity in the list selection to separate vendors in the ERP market. If you are selling upgrades to the PeopleSoft 9 HRMS portal pack, a general ERP list probably won't produce the response you need.
The truth is hard to find
Self-reported IT budget numbers should always be suspect.
The simple tricks and tactics outlined in this article are just a minor snapshot of some of the ways to model IT buyers in your market. Probably the most important thing you should understand is to trust your instincts. The better you understand your own market, the sooner your marketing automation campaigns will be successful.
The author is founder and managing director of Macon Raine, Inc. As an avid indoorsman, his primary interests include the role of marketing on internal technology adoption, micro-finance, military uses of technology and media, self-organizing networks, network and physical security, collaboration and groupware.
