Acquiring Leads in a Ravenous Economy, Part 1 -Why you need ‘em, and why you shouldn’t buy ‘em in bulk.
Acquiring Leads in a Ravenous Economy, Part 2 - Where to get ‘em, and who to look to for help (hint: us).

Well, it seems we’re not the only ones who have picked up on the latest trend to hit big and small business alike: businesses are frantically looking for new, qualified leads who will eventually become great customers, and repeat buyers.

According to a new report by marketing consultancy Winterberry Group, U.S. marketers will more than double their annual spending on online-derived data sources over the next two years, investing as much as $840.0 million by 2012 on database lists and information about digital audiences and online behaviors. Holy smokes! Looks like you better get a leg-up on the competition and come talk to us before your prospects’ inboxes and Twitter feeds are @inundated by your competitors!

The report, “The Changing Mission of Marketing Data,” noted that U.S. marketers will gradually increase their spending on all marketing data, to $8.0 billion by 2012.

Winterberry said the greatest challenge for marketers is managing “integrated data,” including contact information from online resources together with traditional database management vendors, publishers and e-commerce platforms. (Oh boy, we couldn’t agree more! But we have great ways to help you cope with all your online channels, too, should you need it.)

So — what is your company doing to collect new data and leads? How are you managing all of your different marketing channels? And what’s your biggest challenge?

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So what’s the best solution for businesses looking to expand their prospect databases in quality and not just quantity?

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

1) Go social! – with the right tools, ideas, and team you can monitor and grow your social media profiles and engage users in relevant discussions and with relevant offers. Whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or a niche site of your choice – the info is there and ready to grasp!

2) Wake the dead! – Don’t ever assume that a dead email address is a dead contact, or that a list with only partial contact information is worthless. Your contacts can be found on the web today even if they’ve switched companies , careers, or continents – and when you’ve given them years of great service, they’ll likely even be happy to hear from you when you find them!

3) Let them come to you – establish yourself on social media sites and discuss openly the topics that you are passionate about. Just like you are constantly looking for prospects you need online, potential clients are always looking for services that they need online and well. The more spaces that you converse in often, actively, and respectively – the more likely you are to find relevant leads that come to you!

Those are just a few “starter ideas” on how to get your brain buzzing on potential prospects and clients you didn’t even know you had! For more ideas – subscribe to our newsletter to the right of this post, follow our RSS feed, and keep in touch with ListEngage on Twitter and Facebook!

Here at ListEngage we think about this stuff all the time – and have a full-service team that specializes in email appends, data-mining, and matching the absolute best (opt-in) prospects with the absolute best permission-based marketers (aka – you!). Email us if you have any questions — or wanna talk shop.

For more information on our Data Mining services — including email and social media — visit our website here.

The bottom line is: everyone wants new leads, so everyone needs new lists.

But businesses don’t want just ANY LIST– they want updated lists of cold prospects; pin-point specific opt-in lists; and potential customers who genuinely want what they are looking to sell.

Any business can go buy a few thousand names from Jigsaw and hit the “send” button in an email marketing platform – but the trouble lies in the quality of these lists (and the legality of them as well). We’ve almost always found that purchased lists leave businesses sorely disappointed and looking to point fingers, so we suggest that you look “bigger picture” than just a few thousand names and ask yourself:

• Do you plan to also engage these customers on relevant social networks? How will you find them?
• Do you have a strategy for when half your list is lousy (email appends) and the other half is irritated that they weren’t properly opted-in in the first place?
• Have you thought about your offline records much? Or your “dead” email addresses? Don’t you think these people are still out there?
• Are you willing to risk missing a possible new client just because their information changed?
• Have you thought long-term about your brand identity, email deliverability, and your “good name” as a business? What do these messy “batch and blast” processes mean for your bottom line?

Once you’ve thought these things over, keep an eye out for Part 2 of this series, which’ll give you some great ideas on where to find prospects and how to engage them!

Here at ListEngage we think about this stuff all the time – and have a full-service team that specializes in email appends, data-mining, and matching the absolute best (opt-in) prospects with the absolute best permission-based marketers (aka – you!). Part 2 of this series will be posted shortly, so keep an eye out… but in the meantime email, Facebook or Tweet us if you have any questions.

There’s been a lot of debate recently about the future of email: is it pushing forward stronger than ever or on the verge of extinction, about to be overrun by all-inclusive social networks?

As an e-marketing specialist, I find it hard to imagine the internet without email. No matter what you use email for, I believe that we, as online content consumers, will always need our inboxes to aggregate, create, organize, and search the hundreds of online data points we create daily as we navigate the web. Email is the only private online location where users can store and create content with very few limitations or restrictions. Where else can you manage your social networks, businesses, bills, family, friends, banks, job searches, and more in one location?

At ListEngage, we help our clients with email and social media marketing daily, so we see the benefits and drawbacks of each: email is a great relationship building tool but not a great prospect acquisition channel, while social media, if used intelligently, is ideal for prospect acquisition and qualification but lacks the “direct contact” that opt-in email does.

I’ve been really impressed with a company called Groupon lately, that seems to be using email and social media as a dynamic 1-2 punch for spreading their daily deals and messages. Click here to read more about the union of email and social media, and how Groupon is delivering a winning e-marketing TKO.

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Shall I compare thee to a great email list-growth strategy?
You bet!

The two of you “art” fairly similar, I must say.
Our love and my list both started out small, like the darling buds of May.

Then over time, as our love organically grew,
So did my lists-in quality and quantity too!

Like a good little prospect, I subscribed to your love,
And just like the email capture on my website, it fit like a glove.

So on the horizon, what do I see?
Well, more chances to grow us all social-ly,
We can take dance classes, or have dinner with friends,
While my lists will use Twitter as a means to an ends.

Remember my love, thy eternal beauty doth brightly gleam.
And like my list growth strategies, the ROI on your love is Supreme.

Ok, so maybe you’d get backhanded if you actually delivered this sonnet to your True Love this Valentine’s Day– but after you read  ”Why Growing Great Lists is just like Growing Great Love” you might actually agree that the two share some pretty stark  similarities. Could it be that growing any good relationship–whether it’s two people “feeling sparks fly” for the first time or a web visitor signing up for a newsletter for the first time-always begins with a few simple steps?