Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Thoughts On Outsourcing List/database Building?

Posted by Anonymous on 7/7/2005 at 2:32 PM ET 250 Points
To date my technology company has done all target list building in-house for our direct marketing efforts. We are growing quickly and I have limited resources on my team to dedicate more time to this for the next couple of months, but we need the lists quickly.

I'd like member opinions on experiences they've had outsourcing the list / database building process: developing the target list, finding appropriate contacts within the target company, collecting current e-mail addresses and capturing that in a database.

I am looking at doing the direct marketing piece in-house, since it will be primarily e-mail marketing (design, copy, sending). But if I decided to do traditional direct marketing, I'd potentially need to outsource this part as well.

My question is this: if budget is an issue, which it is, do you recommend that I A) outsource the list-building only B) outsource the entire project from start to finish (list building, e-mail, direct mail, follow-up) if I can. Is the cost 2x, 3x, 5x more than just list-building?

Lastly, what are the important questions to ask when I start reaching out to direct marketing firms? Are there any pay-for-performance firms out there that you know of?

Thanks in advance for your help.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by michael on 7/7/2005 at 3:34 PM Accepted
    I'm cheating a little here because we do build lists for companies who want to maintain their own database. We do maintain databases for some smaller companies because they have NO techinical capabilities.

    As far as pay-for-performance, we have offer our clients 2 options. A FLAT rate and a much lower rate based on the amount of response...but then we're involved in the writing of the marketing piece. We can't give up the creativity and hope that someone else will do as well as we will and then assume the risk.

    If you look at the whole process, think about what you want to control and what you're good at. Outsource the rest.

    Hope that helps.
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 7/7/2005 at 4:29 PM Accepted
    Hi Leanne,

    The link for the email marketing service providers vendor selectors list is here:

    https://www.marketingprofs.com/bg/

    Within that page you will find a great resource, a handbook on choosing such a provider co-authored by one of the top emarketing experts here, Paul Broni at Inbox Interactive.

    As a Premium Member, you can download this handbook and a lot of the content is cross-functional for direct marketing as well.

    I hope that helps.


  • Posted by ReadCopy on 7/8/2005 at 5:20 AM Accepted
    I worked in the UK for a technology business, and we wanted to go for massive growth, we build our database in house and it proved to be incredibly successful.

    We go prospects from everyone who worked in the business, we got them to come up with suitable businesses that would make great customers.
    We looked at old DM activity and the lists that they generated.
    We asked exisiting customers for recommendations and referrals.
    I got a list from a directories business who could give we the fastest growing businesses.

    One I got all this raw data, I filtered out any business that typically didn't make a good customer for us (so manufacturing for example, then looked at the number of sites and employees ... the more sites and emplyees the better), finally I looked at the revenues of the suspects and made an assumption that they would spend approx. 6% of this figure on IT and Telecoms - as it turns out this is a good rule of thumb).

    The resulting priorities gave us several tiers of customers to attack, and we brought in £m's in 12 months.

    I guess what I am trying to say is try the internal route first, and really look at bringing in a list of suspects that your own sales teams and employees can almost qualify in themselves. Really look at current customers and work out what a customer profile is, then filter your suspects against this list.

    If you have the capabilities in house then do it in house.

    If you want more info, contact me offline.

    Good Luck
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