Blog posts tagged buying lists

Cutting through the data jargon

The world of business-to-business data is full of confusing acronyms and jargon.

For the uninitiated, data purchasing can be a minefield and if you buy the wrong list you can end up with a failed campaign and wasted marketing budget. The jargon doesn’t help. Here’s our pocket translation guide to help make sure that your direct marketing campaigns succeed and deliver increased sales.

DMA: Direct Marketing Association

This is the governing body for direct marketing. The DMA ensures that all members comply to best practice guidelines and the rules and regulations of gathering, storing and selling data. You should only ever purchase from data companies who are registered DMA members. Offers that are too good to be true usually are just that. A million records for £50 on eBay is the data equivalent of ”a bloke down the pub” and could end up costing you a hundred times that in fines for data misuse – leave well alone and stick to the straight and narrow with the DMA.

TPS, CTPS, MPS

These are the Suppression services;
TPS — Telephone Preference Service
MPS — Mailing Preference Service
CTPS — Corporate Preference Service

Anyone who has registered with any of the above suppression services is off-limits as far as direct marketing is concerned. Aside from the fact it is against the law and will cost you thousands in fines (TPS), why bother wasting time and money trying to hook up with someone who is just not interested? It is damaging to your brand and your budget. Keep your self-respect, keep your money in your pocket and make sure all data you buy is screened against the relevant suppression files. This is standard for DMA members, so you shouldn’t need to worry – unless you speak to that bloke in the pub of course...

Data licences and leases

Data is usually sold on a lease. This means that the data owner leases you the data rather than sells you the data outright. Outright purchases are usually very expensive as data owners, understandably, want to protect the investment they have put into gathering, storing and maintaining the data. If they lease you the data then they retain ownership and you have to comply with the rules of the lease. There are two types of data licence; single-use and multiple-use for 12 months. These are fairly self-explanatory. With single-use you can only communicate with that business or contact, once. With multi-use, you can communicate with them as many times as you want within the 12-month period, depending on the precise terms of the license.

Beware the data seeds

“How will anyone know I am using data when I shouldn’t be?”

The answer is data seeds. Every data file purchased has between one and three dummy records. These dummy records are called data seeds and they are there to monitor activity to that record. If you send an email, it’s recorded. If you send 20 emails, they are also recorded. If you use the data without a licence, the seed reports will highlight this mis-use and you will be charged. But if you comply with the rules you will be fine.

SIC codes

Now we are getting to the nitty-gritty of actually selecting your data. SIC Codes are Standard Industry Codes.  Every business is given an SIC code according to what they do. You want to sell knives? Then the SIC for butchers is a good place to start. A good data salesperson should also advise you on other industries you could target that you might not have considered. For example; restaurants, catering colleges, specialist kitchenware shops and department stores.

Data count

Once you have decided on what industries or SIC codes to target and applied any other criteria such as business size or location; your data advisor will go away and get a data count for you. This is the total number of records that match your criteria, your “data pot” so to speak. From this pot you can decide on how many records you need for your campaign. In some cases the number of records will be less than you expected, in which case you can expand your criteria by targeting additional industries, for example, or by extending the geographical boundaries. Again, a good data broker will be able to advise on the best way to increase the data pot numbers while maintaining the campaign focus.

 

John Keating is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and director at Databroker.

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