Up-to-date, fully-researched, GDPR-compliant direct marketing databases

More Than Words’ marketing databases contain the direct email, phone, and postal contact details for millions of named decision makers within UK businesses, schools, and public sector organisations.

Although many companies have recently diverted much of their spending into digital and social media-marketing, direct marketing still has a place for companies wishing to generate more leads and sales.

With database marketing, you control who receives your promotional messages, how they receive them, and the content of the messages.

Benefits of email database marketing

Email marketing is a popular and reliable method of database marketing. It allows you to communicate with any potential customer immediately, in a form that they can access anywhere.

Establishes authority

The most successful businesses are those considered an authority in their industry.

The best way to position yourself as an authority is through content. Create content which demonstrate your expertise and provide value to your prospects and existing customers.

This could include a blog post, case study, whitepaper or even video testimonials.

Email is an effective channel for delivering valuable content and increasing your company’s exposure to key audiences.

Email content guides prospects through the four stages of the sales funnel from:

• awareness, to
• interest, to
• decision, and to
• action.

It can take up to 13 exposures, on average, to your company for a prospect to become a lead.

Every email you send is a part of this process of building confidence and trust in your company and what you sell.

Email marketing provides your company with instant sales opportunities and builds up a pipeline of future revenue.

Cost and time efficient

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing for any business, especially smaller companies and start-ups.

Whether you choose a managed More Than Words campaign or you run your own campaigns, you can often run a year’s worth for the price of a single telemarketing or postal marketing campaign.

Increased accessibility

As long as your email is optimised for mobile (HubSpot attributes 46% of all email opens to mobile opens), your email marketing campaign will reach decision makers anytime and anywhere.

The immediate nature of email means that you can consider time-limited promotions and offers and begin seeing results straight away.

Benefits of using marketing databases for telemarketing

B2B marketing calls are an effective way to generate:

• strong closeable leads,
• carry out market research,
• follow up on previous marketing campaigns, and
• build personal relationships with contacts.

Immediate feedback on products and services

Telemarketing is a low-pressure way to follow up on and gather feedback about campaigns sent out via other channels.

It can be used as a form of account management, allowing prospects to ask questions or address potential issues. This helps to build trust in your business.

A marketing call can help you to:

• assess how interested a particular lead is in your products or services and
• gain vital information about their challenges and buying cycles to help you to plan future campaigns.

Easier appointment setting

It can be difficult to stand out from the competition.

Face-to-face meetings and personal appointments can significantly shorten the length of the buying cycle. This is because it provides an invaluable human connection early in the process.

Telemarketing is a highly effective way to book face-to-face appointments with prospects. This will offer your company a way of generating closeable sales lead without using ‘hard sell’ tactics.

Measurable

It is easy to monitor and analyse the results of telemarketing so that you can adapt and improve your approach.

Telemarketing allows you to create a market research report for every step of your campaign to determine which elements are effective.

A/B testing is an effective analytic tool and involves dividing your database into smaller groups to see how well different approaches work to generate leads.

Benefits of our marketing databases for direct mail marketing

Postal mail provides the highest level of responses from direct database marketing campaigns.

Many businesses leave it out of their strategy to save money. However research has shown a consistently high return on investment for those who use it – direct mail is a worthwhile investment.

Tangible

A Forbes evaluation of a 2015 study, investigating the neuroscientific advantages of paper-based marketing, found that direct mail offers businesses specific advantages in connecting with the minds of customers.

Mail is a physical, tangible message that is delivered directly to the hands of your prospects.

This makes the content easier to process mentally and it delivers an unconscious value to the recipient.

Integrated

Direct mail can be very effective on its own.

However, a multi-channel marketing strategy that incorporates print and digital can be up to 20% more effective, according to research.

Combining the permanence of print and accessibility of online mediums, a multi-channel strategy creates a higher level of trust for potential customers.

Reduced competition

Direct mail costs a little more than digital methods so it is not as widely used.

Studies have shown that only 2% of advertisements capture the attention of prospects each day. This means that 98% of ads are ignored by consumers.

With an average response rate of around 9%, it is clear that direct mail gives you a significant advantage over your competitors.

Buying marketing databases - FAQ

What is a database for marketing purposes?

Marketing databases (sometimes known as direct sales customer databases) are computer files containing the contact details for decision makers within businesses, schools, or public sector organisation you wish to sell your products and services too.

In addition to containing information about the decision makers, they also often contain information about the business or organisation they work for (including geographical location, size, areas of responsibility, trading activities, and so on).

The marketing databases provided by More Than Words are supplied in one of the following three formats:

• Microsoft Excel file
• Microsoft Access file, or
• Comma-separated values (CSV) file.

What is the purpose of a database for marketing?

The purpose of a database for marketing is to promote your products and services to the audiences you’ve selected.

Marketing database are intended for outbound purposes only – in other words, the type of campaign where you contact the decision makers you want to sell to without being invited to do so first.

In addition to details on the decision makers and the company or organisation they work for is information on the contact method you wish to use – generally email, phone, and/or postal mail.

What companies use databases?

There are 10,000s of companies using marketing databases across the UK every month to promote what they sell to their target audiences.

Although much marketing has moved online in recent years, a significant proportion of British businesses still use email marketing, telemarketing, and postal marketing to generate more leads and sales.

What is direct marketing?

The standard direct advertising definition (sometimes called direct approach marketing) is that is an approach used by companies to contact their target audiences directly with offers on their products and services.

For example, you make outbound and unsolicited telephone calls to prospective clients on a telemarketing campaign.

If you advertise your products and services on the internet and you wait for prospective customers to get in touch with you, this is called reactive marketing.

The same differentiation is true for both email and postal communications.

What are the most common examples of databases for marketing?

While many companies use multiple different forms of direct marketing to generate more leads and sales, most only purchase a database to launch one type of marketing campaign.

Those databases for example would be:

• Email marketing databases – to promote your products and services to potential clients by email
• Direct marketing telemarketing databases – these are used by telemarketing teams who try to make sales, book appointments, or find out more information for later marketing campaigns
• Direct mailing databases – these are used for postal marketing campaigns.

When you speak with a More Than Words’ account manager, please let them know which types of direct marketing methods you wish to use and they’ll make sure that your database contains the information you need to run these campaigns.

Why is marketing database accuracy important?

To explain the importance of keeping customer information up to date, think about a time when you receive a letter, an email, or a call where you were addressed wrongly by the company contacting you.

Personalisation is important in direct marketing – the more you can use it, the more successful your campaign is likely to be.

The people who own and work for businesses, schools, and public sector organisations change regularly.

According to Zoomdata, marketing data accuracy decays at these rates every year:

• 60% of people change job titles within their organizations each year
• 40% of email users change their email address at least once every two years
• 25-33% of email addresses become outdated every year
• 21% of all CEOs change every year
• 20% of all postal addresses change every year
• 18% of all telephone numbers change every year
• 15% of email users change their email address one or more times a year

The older your data, the more you’ll spend on marketing to contacts who have changed or who are no longer there.

This is also one of the main reasons you should never consider using the free marketing databases which are occasionally offered on the internet.

The copyright on the data offered on many of the free marketing databases will belong to a large list owner.

It’s standard practice within the data industry to “seed” records.

A “seed record” is a false entry on a database which allows a list owner or a broker to track:

• which companies are using their database,
• whether they have a licence to use the data, and
• whether they are using the data within the terms and conditions of the licence.

If you use a free marketing database, you should almost certainly expect to be contacted by the copyright holder and they will demand significant compensation for your unauthorised usage.

The data you use on a free marketing database will also likely be at least 2 years old or more.

What is the ultimate database for marketing?

The ultimate business database will contain:

• the decision makers within organisations likeliest to need your products and services
• as much information as possible about the decision makers’ responsibilities and the size of the organisation they work for
• accuracy guarantees offering pro-rata refunds or replacement records if those targets are not met

The data will be licenced to you for twelve months use meaning that, over the course of the year, you can build your company’s credibility in the minds of your target audience and demonstrate the value in and efficacy of your products and services.

Your company will offer you full support on using the database and your company’s marketing team will be there to give you feedback and suggestions on the marketing materials you propose to send to your target clients.

Is there any value in uses our internal databases for marketing?

With all of your customer databases, marketing can unlock significant extra revenue and generate increased loyalty from your existing clients.

In fact, it costs five times as much to find a new customer than it does to sell to an existing one.

For guidance on your customer databases and direct marketing, please speak with one of our account managers.

How has GDPR affected database marketing?

GDPR has significantly affected database marketing to consumers, to sole traders, and to unincorporated partnerships.

The effect on direct marketing campaigns to limited companies, schools, and the public sector have been limited in contrast.

In order to make sure that your marketing campaigns to limited companies, schools, and the public sector are compliant with GDPR, please observe the following three guidelines:

• you should sell products and services of direct benefit to the operations of the business or organisation
• you should not sell products and services of direct benefit to the individuals working for the business or organisation (for example, selling personal life insurance instead of selling key person insurance)
• you should cease contacting the decision makers on your contact database who have requested that you don’t contact them anymore.

If you’d like to see More Than Words’ GDPR policy, please ask one of our account managers for a copy when you get in touch with us.

Contact us about our marketing databases

Please contact us and let us know what you want to achieve and who you want to work with.

We’ll then find a wide range of contact details for decision makers within businesses, schools, and the public sector in greatest need of your products and services.

Share with our experienced B2B marketers how you want to market to them – phone, email, and/or post.  Our team will get back to you within 24 hours with a count and a fully-costed quote.

We’re available on 0330 010 8300 or you can email our database information team by clicking here .