How to Build an Email Marketing List for B2B

Jackie from Key Principles here again with a follow-up article on B2B Email Marketing. If you’ve not read the B2B Email Marketing Guide Part 2 – Strategy article, you can check it out here.

In part 3 of the Email Marketing Guide, I’m going to cover your email marketing list and how to build it.

Your email marketing list and building it

What is your email marketing list?

Your email marketing list, or email list, is a collection of email addresses that are obtained and compiled by you for the purpose of sending marketing messages via email. Clearly, it’s a crucial component in your email marketing campaigns. And truth be told, the quality and accuracy of your email marketing list has a massive impact on the success or otherwise of your campaigns.

How do you build your email marketing list?

At Key Principles, we generally recommend that clients look at collating all their current data and then to look at how they can start to systematically add to the data set.

Building Your Email List – Current Data

So often companies have vast amounts of data that is not kept up to date or managed properly so the first thing to do is get all the data together and review it. Some examples of where you might find your data are provided below.

1. Your own marketing department data – look at your current marketing database.

2. Accounts department information.

3. Customers (current and previous) – check with your accounts departments as well as customer service department.

4. Getting sales personnel’s information – ask each salesperson to compile their list of contacts and ban separate excel spreadsheets as this could lead to a Data Protection Act issue.

5. Any emails from your website contact forms or email newsletter sign ups.

6. Go through your exhibition and events data and paperwork.

7. Review customer application forms and order forms.

Once you have all the data together split the data into customers and prospects, and if you have the information, you can split the data further by adding the product or service the customer takes or took previously and aim to be able to as you move forward.

Building Your Email Marketing List – Adding More Contacts

Adding more contacts and building your data set is important. By continually adding to your email marketing list, you are building a real business asset that will help you to generate leads and sales over time. Below are some ideas on how you can build your list.

1. Website sign-ups – encourage opt-ins to newsletters with guides, white papers, reports, etc. sent to their email address. By offering something of value on your website, you can start to build your email list. Those that opt-in can automatically be added to your email list if the forms on your website are linked to your email marketing software or CRM (customer relationship management software).
Make it easy for website visitors to contact you and opt into your email marketing. How easy is it for visitors to find the contact us page? Keep the number of fields you have on your forms to a minimum. With contact forms you may want to include email address, first name, last name, company, county/country and free text box for enquiry details. However, the less fields you make mandatory the more likely someone will provide their details. You can test this over time too to see what provides the ideal conversion rate.

2. Customers – ask if they would like to receive information via email. This helps to get buy in and will increase open rates.

3. Prospects – if they contact you by phone, ask for their email and get permission to send them information and your email newsletter for example.

4. Exhibitions, events, trade shows and networking – collect email addresses from everyone that visits your stand either digitally or with a sign-up sheet. When networking swap business cards and then most importantly follow up with the connections you’ve made – connect on LinkedIn and send an email too. Keep in touch via email, LinkedIn and your email marketing newsletters.

5. Product and service pages – add contact forms to your service pages to increase enquiry rates and get more sign ups to your email marketing. This also helps with segmenting your list as you can provide more information by email to the individual based on the product or service they have shown an interest in.

6. Purchased lists – you can buy lists from various sources, and this will be discussed in the next section. Although often discouraged as this falls to the cold email marketing arena discussed in Part 1 of the B2B Email Marketing Guide, it can be a way to increase your email marketing list.

7. Syndicated email marketing and partnerships – also known as co-op email marketing or shared email marketing is where you partner with other companies or brands to send a single email to a shared list of subscribes. This can be a great way to build your email list. You need to think carefully about who you could partner with and clearly both parties would need to see the advantage of a joint email marketing campaign. it’s important to carefully choose your partners and ensure that they align with your brand values, target audience, and goals. You should also consider the reputation and credibility of the participating companies to maintain the trust and engagement of the shared subscriber base.

8. Pop up banners – before a visitor leaves your website, you can add a pop up that encourages them to leave their email address and some contact details. This is best being something that would be of real value to the visitor and could reflect the page they are visiting for example.

9. Social Media Marketing – social media is a great way to connect with potential customers and build your email list. You can do this by simply connecting with people online, by providing something of value, and by simply promoting your email marketing on your social media pages to encourage sign ups.

10. Advertising – you can use paid advertising to build your email list. You can do this by running ads on social media, Google, Bing, etc.

We would recommend that you always seek permission from individuals to be added to the email marketing database and also to provide details regarding what you will send, and that they will be able to opt out of your email marketing very easily.

Ideally, you want to be able to segment your email marketing lists into customers and prospects as well as past purchases and interests. If you think about the types of customers, you have and what they might be interested in, you can start to build your list in a way that enables you to segment the list and provide information that the customer and prospect will find of most interest.

Based on the above, you may need to look at and revise your website to include more forms and a pop-up banner as well as review your business processes so that you are proactively building your email list in a systematic, automated manner.

Building Your Email List – Buying In Lists

Clearly, one way to build your email marketing list fast would be to buy in lists. I’ve already covered the pros and cons of cold email marketing which is allowable for B2B businesses in the B2B Email Marketing Guide Part 1 so here I’ll simply provide some useful sources of data and some ideas on how to get lists that are sector specific.

Here are five companies that are often mentioned in discussions about B2B data providers in the UK:

1. Dun & Bradstreet: Dun & Bradstreet is a prominent provider of business data, analytics, and insights. They offer a wide range of B2B data solutions, including company information, firmographics, contact data, and industry insights.

2. ZoomInfo: ZoomInfo is known for its comprehensive B2B database and contact information. They provide accurate and up-to-date data on millions of companies and professionals, enabling targeted outreach and sales intelligence.

3. Experian: Experian, a well-established credit reporting and data services company, offers B2B data solutions that include business and industry information, credit risk data, firmographics, and marketing data for targeted campaigns.

4. MarketScan: Our unique master database of 5.6 million B2B decision makers has more depth and reach than any other. It combines five top data sources and is rigorously updated, and quality checked every month to provide the highest deliverability warranties in the industry for over 40 years.

5. Prospect 360: One of the UK’s most trusted list brokers, Prospect 360 offers access to over 6 million accurate and verified contacts and records. Our data is sourced from public and private sources, including corporate and government entities, as well as a number of subscription-based premium data providers. List subscriptions can be purchased for one time or multiple usages and time periods or contracted on an annual basis.

The above list is certainly not exhaustive. You can search on Google and other search engines for a company you would like to use, and perhaps get quotes from 2 or 3 suppliers depending on how much data you want to purchase. It’s a good idea to see if you can get a sample of the data too.

You need to be quite specific with your requirements and certainly only buy the data you definitely need. Make sure you include sectors, job titles / seniority, company size and more. Consider who your ideal clients are and build a profile so you can then just buy the data that is right for your business. Don’t be seduced by the thought of buying lots of data, instead think carefully about who you want to target.

Remember, it’s crucial to evaluate the data quality, accuracy, and compliance with data privacy regulations when considering any B2B data provider.

Additionally, consider your budget when making a decision as well as how often you are going to use the data and what information you can provide those new recipients; providing value is crucial. You really need to build a plan and have a series of emails to send your new contacts that introduces you, provides value and starts to build a relationship.

Once you have a list of subscribers, it’s important to keep it up-to-date. Make sure to remove people who unsubscribe from your list and update your list with new subscribers as you get them. You should also segment your list so that you can send targeted emails to different groups of people.

Conclusion

It appears I’m at a point to conclude this latest part of the email marketing series of articles.

All the best in building your list, I hope that this guide helps, and if you have any questions or need any advice, feel free to reach out to me at jackie.key@keyprinciples.co.uk

In part 4 I’ll cover email marketing software with part 5 being all about setting up your email marketing. Part 6 is about how you can improve your email marketing return on investment.

Stay tuned and if you want to be informed of the publication of Part 3, why not sign up to our regular email marketing newsletters? Just add your first name, last name and email address in the box to the right 😊.