The last year was a tough one on most companies starting with the banking crisis, the financial downturn and then the entire world economy falling to pieces. While B2C markets reached all time lows, B2B marketers were not spared either but towards the end of the year a lot of the conversations changed from “we are all doomed!” to “what do we have to do to pick up sales and how do we generate more leads?”. The goals were quite clear. Number of leads generated have to increase. Budgets wont be increased so the cost per lead has to come down. 

ROI has become the keyword and investing in quality leads at a lower cost is what it’s all about. While inbound lead generation has become a very strong sustainable approach for a lot of B2B marketers to grow their lead databases, supplementing them with traditional lead sources such as conference lists, business contact lists and company database subscriptions will remain just as important to build the volume of leads in the lead generation funnel. Having access to a fresh supply of quality leads especially at the start of a selling cycle is extremely valuable in being able to qualify and engage more sales ready leads through the year. However high volumes and low costs are not worth much if means you are compromising on quality of data and leads. Eventually its the quality of your leads and business contact databses that will bring you the results so thats the key requirement to insist on when you source new leads.

As you kick off your customer acquisition this year, make sure you are working with a fresh lead database which is relevent, focussed and most importantly, high quality.  

Generating education leads in universities and colleges is a specialized space and yet there are several technology and non technology based organizations that sell into the higher education verticals. While selling into educational organizations as with most other verticals, having the right decision maker for your offering plays a big role in how effectively you are able to dig into this market. 

Developing the right leads within the universities and colleges often will involve more direct marketing, email marketing and telemarketing to supplement the other efforts and it often starts with having a good list of decision makers within these institutes. This is exactly what we kept in mind while developing the Active Contacts Education Contacts Database which currently has just over 20,000 leads at about 2000 universities and K-12 schools. Each of these contacts has the essential contact details such as email id’s and postal addresses which constantly run through a verification process to maintain the quality of the database. 

So if you are a b2b marketer and its education leads that you are looking for. This should be the resource you were looking for.

B2B contact lists and databases are just like perishable products. Each of them has its shelf life and as they sit the quality of that database is bound to deteriorate. Contacts may have left their positions at companies or moved within them and sometimes entire company offices may have shifted locations or undergone some changes. Often by the time these lists or databases are ready to be used in a campaign they are no longer as effective as they were. There is not much that can be done to stop lead lists and customer databases deteriorating with time but here are a few tips for your lists:

-While buying a ready list always inquire how old the list is and when was the data acquired or last verified. If its more than 6 months old you may want to look elsewhere.

-Inquire about the source or the process by which the list was built to understand what exactly you are paying for and how useful it will be in light of your campaign requirements.

-If you have a database which has been sitting for longer than a few months its advisable to invest in some data verification or cleansing services before actually running a campaign off it. This will ensure better results.

-Remember as a thumb rule larger databases of contacts may mean more leads but also means they are a lot harder to maintain in terms of quality and may not always be the best bang for your buck.

-Check the contents and type of contacts to ensure what you are getting are the contacts or leads you need and don’t go only by numbers of contacts. Unless those contacts are relevant to your sales, they are just contacts and not leads.

So the next time you are evaluating a lead list or purchasing a contact database remember to check the expiry date.