Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Good luck! I have found marketing people to be the hardest to get to register for anything. This is especially true if you are asking for personal details.

I question why you need such detailed information about marketing folks. It certainly would not impress me to buy something from you just because you knew my anniversary. In fact, you would become very suspect in my eyes. But that is your business.

The only way I see you getting this information is by bribing people to give it to you. By that I mean, you have to offer something that is very valuable.
If you are looking for general info I suggest www.jigsaw.com or www.thelistinc.com.

Birth, marriage, and divorce announcements are usually publicly recorded. If you have the skills/contacts, you can mine for the data by going through (online) public records.

Alternatively, you might befriend some physicians with an offer. You send out emails to their clients, but the physician provides the data to a trusted 3rd party that'll send the letter/email, but won't provide the data back to you. It'll be up to you to craft the copy to encourage them to contact you and opt-in to your CRM.

Dear Ansh,

What's the relevance and significance of the information you hope to collect? How does it help me understand your products and just how does that understanding help me solve my problems?

Where's the context?

Let me put this another way: if you're selling to healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, and if I'm one of the marketing people you're targeting you need to know and GRASP this single, simple point:

Database management or not, if you've fostered no previous relationship with me or my company, if I've never heard of you, the following rule applies: my date of birth, my wife's name, our wedding anniversary, and the names of our kids are, how should
I put this? NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN BUSINESS.

I'm serious here.

Asking questions like these without first having taken the trouble
to create and maintain lasting, value-based, relationships based on significance and relevance is A), a waste of time AND MINE, and B), doing you no favours.

Even if you send me an e-mail explaining the reason or send some besuited executive to fill out the form, you'll again be wasting your time AND MINE, And, on top of all this, you'll be insulting people's intelligence.

I know how to fill out a form and thank you, I've been involved in marketing long enough to know what information is relevant and what isn't.

If you're selling me healthcare products, sell healthcare products and talk to me about the benefits to patients and end users.

But if you want to swiftly lose my business AND the business of
the other people I know, ask about my family.

Bottom line, collect primary WORK contact information and preferences and offer what you're selling. But leave my family
out of your sales funnel.

The only way family details MIGHT be relevant is by a member of your staff visiting my office and striking up a conversation about a photograph on my desk of my wife and kids. Then, and ONLY then does the conversation move in the following direction:

Sales rep's Q: I couldn't help noticing your family photo. My kids are/were that age. You're a lucky man/woman.

My answer: Yes, Mike's 7 and Sally's 3 ... going on 13. How old are your kids?

Sales rep: Jimmy's 6 and Maddy turned 4 two weeks ago and Jimmy's 7 next month. My wife/husband and I have been married for seven years. You? (noticing wedding ring).

My asnwer: We just celebrated our 8th anniversary last month. Mike's 8 in October and Sally's 4 next month.

And so on.

See? No forms. No BS. No probing questions out of context. Relevance. Significance. Common ground. And with appropriate follow up, even if it takes a year or more to collect all this information.

Then and ONLY then might it be relevant to use in some subtle way.

But it ought to be the icing, not the cake, which means don't over do it.
If it's too heavy-handed it comes across as fake, plastic, and insincere and then suddenly, it's whoops, no more returned phone calls.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

I would like to answer your question, but before I do, I need a bit more information.

Please provide me with your full name, your wife's full name, and the names of all your children.

Please provide me with e-mail addresses for you, your wife, and your children.

Please provide me with each of your birthdays, and be sure to let me know what your anniversary is.

After you provide the above information, I will be in a better position to show you how wonderful a marketing person I am.

(By the way, can you also provide information on your bank account numbers, your balance in each bank account, your credit card information, your mother's maiden name, your drivers license number and your home address? Thank you in advance.)