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GDPR is looming, coming into force in May 2018. While this will have very far reaching effects on B2C companies marketing to consumers or EU citizens, the effects on B2B are less drastic, at least for the time being.
GDPR changes the way you can contact individuals, Sole Traders and Partnerships in the respect that they have now have to specifically opt-in to receiving emails from your company and can demand that their information is removed from all of your databases.
The laws regarding email marketing to B2B companies, specifically PLC’s, LLP’s, Limited Companies and Government Departments are not, however, going to change drastically in the short term.
What Can You Do?
GDPR is a wake-up call to every B2B company using outbound marketing to get their houses in order as far as the holding and using of data is concerned. As long as you provide your target contacts with the ability to opt-out within your email communications, you will be within the law. This process has to be strictly adhered to in regard to contacts requesting to be unsubscribed from your marketing emails.
Where this situation occurs, you’ll need to both retain the contact record and unsubscribe it from any further marketing activity, in other words, suppress any further communication with that contact. If the contact record is actually deleted, you run the risk of them finding their way back into your data and re-contacting them, which will then be unlawful.
As is always the case, accurate data is your most important asset when email marketing and if you have a strong message, targetted at exactly the right contact, you have a much better chance that you’re communication will be seen as useful and the contact will continue to accept communications from you in the future.
How Can You Make It Happen?
Existing Data Most companies will have thousands of records held around the organisation in a number if disparate systems such as databases, spreadsheets, CRM systems etc, all of which will require consolidation. Much of this data will be old and inaccurate and with the average churn rate for staff running at around 15% per annum, it only takes a few years before your data is completely useless.
An ongoing process of cleansing and appending needs to take place on a constant basis and if you can’t remember when this last happened, or don’t have a process in place, your data is already innacurate.
There’s no quick fix for this, so each record will have to be physically called to ascertain it’s accuracy, then updated or deleted. This can be a very time consuming and costly process, and can either be done in-house, or given to an Outsourcing company, like ourselves to do it for you, which can save a huge amount of both money and time.
New Data Buying new data is always a risk, no matter what guarantees for accuracy you get from data vendors, the data is never quite as current as it might be. This makes it difficult for use with marketing automation platforms, as the percentages of hard and soft bounces or being classified as spam or unsubscribes are closely monitored and are generally much higher than reputable platforms will accept.
Many companies have experienced their accounts being closed by their email marketing partners for regularly exceeding acceptable percentages in relation to these criteria.
Generally, like most things in life, you very much “get what you pay for” with data, with the lowest level being data scraped from targetted websites with automated tools, through less or more current cuts of specific demographics from databases containing millions of contacts.
A Different Approach LeadSource provides a different approach to ensuring your GDPR compliance, providing all of the services required to both cleanse and append your existing data, undertake new projects to discover contacts based around specific demographics and roles, or outsource the complete lead Generation cycle.
We use a different methodology from the traditional approaches and create customised data on a bespoke project by project basis, understanding the demographics of your target market and contact roles, then researching each and every record to ensure accuracy levels nearing 100%. We basically become an extension of your own marketing process and become more integtrated and effective the longer we partner together.
We NEVER use old data or scraping, but use real people and sophisticated tools available to gather the most current information, then conduct thorough email address validation for accuracy before hand-over to the customer.
If required, you can outsource the complete process to us and we’ll provide all of the data, messaging and email delivery for each project, so your Salespeople can concentrate on guiding solid prospects through the sales process, while we take over all of the demand creation and just provide you with new opportunities.
The company required stakeholder research from prospective data in the UK market for account-based marketing. Contacts from C-level Executives to marketing functions were targeted from a selection of 4000 accounts, with 10 contacts per organisation, with added flexibility to cater for small enterprises. The full quota was for 40,000 possible contacts with the following information for each contact as shown below:
Fields required:
First Name
Last Name
Company Name
Job Title
LinkedIn: Added by Orbital
Email
Phone Switchboard
Phone Direct (where possible)
Mailing Address
Country
Job Titles:
CRM (Executive)
CRM (Manager)
Digital (Exec)
Digital (Manager)
Marketing (Executive)
Manager Manager
Online Marketing Manager
Ecommerce (Executive)
Ecommerce Manager
OUR APPROACH
We provided a real-time human research team and lead generation specialists, working exclusively for the company and employing state of the art forensic tools and proven methods to obtain and verify data, enabling us to locate exactly the right contacts. We do not cap our employee’s output and work closely with the company team to provide optimum results. To ensure this, when working with marketing data, we strive for 70-100 contacts per hour and contract each of our employees employee for 160 hours per month. Each team has a dedicated quality assurance director that focuses purely on monitoring and ensuring the accuracy of the output.
PROJECT ROLLOUT
Completed within a 3 month time-frame we provided a full set of data per account, matching the companies exact requirements. The quality assurance director also provided reports with similar job titles that we located. This data was kept separate from the initial requirements sheet then added once agreed with the company. Full visibility was provided to the company at all times.
We succesfully completed the project in twelve weeks, with 5 data entry specialists, working 160 hours per month. Team hours: 2,400. Total Contact Reach. 40,000 Contacts Total Leads. 4000 Output. Average 16 Contacts Per Hour
We provide the most cost effective sales and marketing activity, with the best return on investment you will ever find!
Our Ultimate Outreach is simple to initiate, you either provide us with your target customer demographics or a list of businesses you want to become clients, and we do the rest.
We don't use old contact lists, we work on a project by project basis for each customer, researching each contact to ensure all information is 100% accurate and current.
This includes everything from researching the key decision makers and their current contact details, to sending them a series of emails about why they should employ your business. The only thing you need to do is wait for the replies to arrive!
Here's a breakdown of how we would conduct a project for your company:
Target ListYou provide us a target list of businesses, or just the demographics of your ideal customer.
Contact ResearchWe then find the name, email address and job title of your typical buyer at each business.
Email ValidationWe use 3 different tools to validate the email addresses to ensure accuracy.
Email ContentWe create and provide you with draft content for approval of a series of 8 outreach emails.
Email OutreachWe schedule each contact into the automated series of emails to engage them.
NotificationsEverytime we find a new contact, or someone replies to our outreach you are notified.
Exclusion ListYou can provide us an exclusion list of existing customers or leads already in your pipeline to ensure we don’t contact them.
Reporting & OptimisationWe report back every step of the way and share what’s working and what isn’t, working as a team to constantly improve results.
Contact MatchWe strive for a 95% contact match for the job titles you provide.
Delivery RateWhen the validation process is completed, we’re seeing an average 98% delivery rate.
Open RateSending 8 emails over a period of 2 months we’re seeing an average open rate of 50%.
Reply RateA reply can either be a sales enquiry or a request for no contact. We’re seeing 10% reply rate.
This company is changing the way the digital generation shop and discover brands all over the world. Since forming in 2011, the company has grown to employ over 100 people at offices in the around the globe. The business currently generates over £600m in annual sales revenue for the likes of Apple, ASOS and Spotify. Boasting a user base of over 5m verified students, a social media following of over 600k and a partner portfolio of over 500 brands, engages with thousands of students each day across 7 countries, including the UK, US, Australia and Germany.The Project Due to their rapid global expansion, the company required a more flexible, “Follow the Sun” support model to more adequately cater for their increasing user base over different Time Zones.
Our customer service team now sits on the front line, enabled to deal with email tickets and social media engagement for the company on a 24/7 basis. As the vast majority of the companies customers are of the younger generation, brought up in a connected world that “lives and breathes” online, an efficient online support model is required to meet their high levels of expectation. Our “Follow the Sun” Methodology was developed to provide round-the-clock customer service, literally “following” the sun around the globe. Traditionally, this kind of approach only appeared to be feasible for larger enterprises as they had the resources required to open multiple locations and hire employees around the world. We implemented a global work-flow where customer support tickets are handled by our professional teams based in different time zones, ensuring customer queries are channelled to the support team best suited to increase responsiveness and reduce delays any delays.
We closed $250,000 worth of business in the first month of using the LeadSource's Ultimate Outreach Service. After 2 years with a limited marketing budget, we tried everything we could to get traction in a new territory. We attended events, produced a large volume of content and spent a significant amount of money on digital advertising. All of these channels provided results, but we were also looking for something bigger and better.
In 2017 we used the companies Ultimate Outreach approach and got completely blown away by the results. We provided them with the demographics of our target customer, our proposition and they did the rest. Within the first month and a $8,000 investment we closed 2 deals totalling $250,000, we instantly doubled our investment and now receive over 30 replies a day. This channel for us is game changing and I would happily suggest this Ultimate Outreach methodology to any business” VP of Operations – Email Marketing Provider.
The rise in outsourcing all manner of services has come about over the past 50 years with companies looking to become more competitive by outsourcing their non-core business activities.
Initially, this was done with services such as building maintenance, reception and cleaning services, and was initially conducted “in-country”, but the advantages and economies of scale to farming services to overseas companies soon became apparent, driving huge growth in areas such as technology, customer services and call centres.
At first, there was a lot of resistance from the UK consumer, complaining about cultural differences and different accents but since then there have been enormous improvements to the extent that the quality of services are at a par, and sometimes beyond, what can be provided locally.
Within the UK public sector, there was a huge shift in emphasis in the 1980s as a result of the reforms implemented by the Conservative Government that forced public authorities to adopt free-market principles because of the perceived inefficiencies of the sector.
The Rise of Outsourcing
Companies such as Tata and Wipro became hugely successful in the technology sector for providing high quality services at a far more cost effective price point than local companies. It became almost impossible for companies such as IBM and Accenture to compete when tendering for contracts, to such an extent that they opened up their own offshoring operations to offer “blended” solutions to compete.
This comprised elements of offshoring combined with local expertise on the ground, with “anchors”, or project managers on each side to ensure requirements were communicated effectively between the different operating areas.
At first, these services were only available to large organisations, such as Public Sector departments and large Enterprises, but have since been refined and tailored to include SMB’s and start-ups, with a range of services catering for such diverse areas as Marketing, Virtual Assistants and Customer Services.
The Situation Todayi
Today, it’s possible to deliver these services at an exponentially lower cost without sacrificing quality or efficiency, which is why more and more organisations are choosing to outsource their requirements.
To put this into perspective, using India as an example, their annual number of University IT graduates exceeds the UK’s total Graduates in ALL subjects across the country. There are huge opportunities for cost saving and efficiency gains by tapping into a highly educated and intelligent workforce.
India is just one of many countries that has embraced the provision of outsourcing to fuel it’s growth, with the Philippines, Vietnam, South Africa and New Zealand to name just a few, basically you can now choose your outsourcing partner to suit your own culture, language, infrastructure, time-zone, cost base, pretty much any demographic you need.
Today the market has evolved to a stage where you can pick and choose the exact services that you want, for every budget, sector and specialisation. Outsourcing providers have focused on becoming experts in specific areas to give them competitive advantage and deliver the exact solution you require.
My particular area of expertise has been in New Business Sales in the IT Sector for the past 30 years, while over the past 5 using that knowledge and experience to design and create Customer Engagement strategies, then develop them to a stage where I can hand over qualified opportunities to an experienced Sales Person.
This enables the Sales Person to do what they do best, that is, to engage with decision makers that have a qualified requirement and are actively seeking organisations who can provide them with a solution.
I personally utilise outsourcing for many of the aspects of this work to accelerate the process and provide a significant Return on Investment.
In summary, whatever your specific requirements or specialisations are, you can find a reputable outsourcing operation to help you deliver it, saving yourself time, money and often doing so in a more effective way.
