Best Practices in List Building & Deliverability

Chat or Q/A

#AOWEB

Today’s Presenters

Don Wynns Director, Business

Development

Jeff LintonProduct Marketing

Manager@jeffreylinton

Building Quality Email Lists

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About ZoomInfo

▶ ZoomInfo is the largest B2B information directory, with over 50 million employee records across 5 million companies

▶ Patented web-crawling tools along with a community of thousands of contributors are how ZoomInfo complies their data

▶ Contact profiles are updated every 90 days▶ Their mission is to map the business landscape in near real-time,

moving towards updating all profiles every 30 days

REPORT: Sales & Marketing Institute: B2B DATA DECAY, HOW BAD IS IT AND WHAT TO DO!

72% of business people change one or more

key elements on their business card each year

What does this mean for you? Your prospect contact data is likely decaying faster than you are able to update it.

Challenges of Data Decay on Email Marketing Initiatives

Data Decay

Don’t End Up in a Roadside Ditch

▶ Incomplete company info

• How can you segment?

▶ Incomplete contact data –

• How can you personalize?

▶ Dupes with inconsistent info –

• 1 “John Doe” or 2?

▶ Data fields with nonsense data (ex:

“TBA”, “TBD”, “TBC”, etc)

• Don’t write yourself an IOU

Costly Campaign Impact

A recent DemandGen study revealed that 50% of respondents

reported having less than 3% responses to campaigns

▶ Quality over Quantity ▶ Many companies emphasize the number of contacts they have

rather than the quality of their contacts. That doesn’t correlate to success in the B2B market. Opt in and Permission Passed plus intelligently segmented data is the key to campaign performance.

▶ Low Response & Conversion Rates▶ Sending out “batch and blast” email campaigns usually bring dismal

returns in terms of responses, thus result in fewer conversions

REPORT: Assessing the Impact of Dirty Data – A Demand Gen Report

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The Challenge

Missing Pieces to the Email Marketing Puzzle• Industry:

– Are you reaching an audience with your inbound and email marketing consistent with your existing buyers?

• Company Information: – You can’t score a lead without reliable “firmographic” data! Is the

prospect company consistent with your existing buyers in terms of size, location, revenue…?

• Titles – No title, no performance: – Personalized offers resonate– Marketing to outdated or incorrect titles is expensive– What is the (negative) impact on your brand from messaging to

incompatible job functions?

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Maximize Your Deliverability Rate

• Successful, multi-channel marketing organizations commit to ongoing data management and cleansing initiatives – Data Hygiene Strategy

• The inherent decay of B2B data makes an annual “spring data cleaning” insufficient. Rust never sleeps, and neither does data degradation.

• Marketers and their performance are being measured more closely than ever - ensure your metrics of choice are based on real opportunities.

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Data Cleanse Options

▶ Validate Email Addresses▶ Find, remove and replace bad email addresses and spam traps with

a live online test▶ Replace invalid email addresses with updated contacts▶ Avoid being labeled a “spammer” by reducing your bounce rate

▶ Append and Clean Your Database▶ Fill in the blanks with fresh and accurate contact data▶ Transform a list of companies or accounts into an actionable list of

targeted contacts

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What YOU Can Do

• Find a service oriented data provider that offers a suite of solutions inclusive of data provisioning and an ongoing commitment to data hygiene

• Buyer Beware – the data provider ecosystem is filled with false promises and inflated metrics!– Test before you buy - ask these questions:

• Is your data provider reputable? • Do they have a track record of success and references?• Do they have a commitment to privacy regulations?

How to maximize email deliverability for greater campaign

success

Your email delivery results improve when you send only

email that is wanted and expected, and purge old, inactive contacts.

List Management

ExpectationMail to people who

want and expect your email. Contacts who opt in are your best

prospects

Confirm or double-confirm

subscribers who opt in

Address BooksEncourage recipients to

add you to their address books; make it easy for them to do so

Privacy PolicyHave a clear privacy

policy for subscribers

Opt OutMake it easy and obvious

for contacts to opt out (beyond CAN-SPAM

requirements)

Honor “unsubscribe” requests

immediately

Optimal TimeDetermine an optimal

mailing time and frequency, and stick to

it, for consistency

Targeted Subscription Lists Develop online forms

that encourage people to indicate their interests; use this data to create targeted subscription

lists

• Clean your lists on a regular basis• Understand the engagement cycles of your sales

process• Identify the point where recipient engagement

drops; segment disengaged subscribers by useful criteria, such as whether they ever made a purchase

• Re-engage inactive contacts with messaging and offers targeted to their specific segment

• Purge inactive, unengaged contacts when necessary

List Cleaning and Maintenance

Stages in spam filtering

StageTWO

StageTHREE

StageONE

Passing Spam Filters

• Send to people who want and expect your email

• Use a consistent “From” address

• Make sure your company name and contact info is obvious

• Clear, strong subject line + compelling, concise content

• Make sure links point to valid domains

• Have a high ratio of text to images; avoid image-only email

• Minimize or avoid Flash and JavaScript

• Make the opt-out process easy and obvious

• Comply with all CAN-SPAM requirements

• Use email authentication

Passing Content Filters

• Write a subject line that body copy fulfills• Short, compelling emails are more deliverable • Don’t use “Dear” as a salutation• Don’t use “click here” or “click below” to offer links to people• Avoid “spammy” words and phrases: “free”, “bonus”,

“amazing”, “buy direct”, “bargain”, “no investment”, and so on• Use ALT text for your images• Using all caps is a SPAM CHARACTERISTIC• Use exclamation points sparingly, and don’t use

several in a row!!!!

According to the DMA’s most recent (2010) Response Rate Trend Report , the average email to a house list generated:

• 19.47 percent open rate and 6.64 percent click-through rate

• 1.73 percent conversion rate• Bounce-back rate of 3.72 percent and

an unsubscribe rate of 0.77 percent.

Develop your own success

Tracking and Reporting

Develop and use your own benchmarks

• Know your average delivery, bounce, and engagement rates• Look for anomalies

The more targeted and personalized your email is, the higher your rates will be

• In B2B, clickthrough rates of 10%–20% are considered good

Consistently low rates suggest that your email is uninteresting, or your list is bad

• Higher “delete” rates affect your reputation and delivery

Sending Email

Clean your lists before sending

Allow enough time

Send small batches first

Preview and test emails

Test and benchmark your own mailing schedule

Include a plain text version

Top 10 Delivery Best Practices

Top Ten Delivery Best Practices

10. Build your lists carefully

9. Test. Preview your email on major email clients and mobile devices

8. Maintain your lists assiduously; purge and re-engage

7. Don't overload an email with images

6. Send content that subscribers care about

5. Use a consistent "From" header address

4. Develop consistent campaigns

3. Use clean and correct HTML formatting

2. Track your results and monitor performance by list source

1. Abide by all CAN-SPAM rules and guidance

Need Help?

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www.actonsoftware.com

go.zoominfo.com/ZoomInfoDemo-ActOnWebinar