he 2012 Data

New Technologies Reinvent List Building With Innovative Methods For Sourcing Profitable Prospects

Acquisition Report:

Presented by

Sponsored by

The 2012 Data Acquisition Report 2

It’s been firmly established that data quality

has a direct correlation to the success (or

failure) of marketing and sales efforts. That

fact has now sparked a parallel discussion:

how is prospect data being sourced in the

first place? The emerging view is that data

acquisition — the precursor to all database

creation — wields tremendous influence

over BtoB pipeline quality, campaign

effectiveness and, ultimately, revenue

performance.

Coming into focus is the reality that data

acquisition strategy is either inadequate or

completely absent, and that much list rental/

purchase activity is mired in pre-automation

practices. However, progressive firms are

making breakthroughs using efficient new

models of third-party list/contact acquisition.

Recent research validates these approaches.

In its February 2011 survey, Customer

Data Acquisition: The Keys to Effective List

Management, IDC sampled list acquisition

budgets, behaviors and beliefs among BtoB

organizations. While respondents said their

spending on third-party data will increase in

2011 and 2012, the findings expose some

major caveats. “Despite the rising cost and

importance of customer data, only 11% of

respondents said they are able to manage it

very effectively,” the report states. IDC said

its advisory work with marketing executives

reveals that data acquisition and hygiene

currently suffer from three primary ailments:

• Lack of central authority to

understand who owns customer data at

an enterprise level;

• Inconsistentdefinitions of customer

records and key fields within legacy

applications (sales/CRM, finance/billing,

service, pricing, provisioning and support);

and

• Fragmented usage policies that lack

enforcement.

“Despite the rising cost and importance of

customer data, only 11% of respondents said they are able to

manage it very effectively.”- Customer Data Acquisition: The Keys

to Effective List Management

- IDC CMO Advisory Service

“The traditional list business is undergoing

rapid change. First, there are many new

sources and technologies for acquiring

names. Web scraping, social media and all

forms of inbound marketing are changing

the landscape. Second, consumer behavior

and attitudes around privacy are changing.

And, of course, the legislative environment

is changing, as well. Global marketers must

understand and comply with regulations

that vary by region and country.”

Brian Kardon,

Chief Marketing Officer, Eloqua

The 2012 Data Acquisition Report 3

With so many new factors compounding data

disarray, marketers are looking for guidance.

This white paper will present best practices in

data acquisition as expressed by some of the

top minds in data marketing and analysis.

Data Discipline: Why It’s Needed And How To Apply It

A byproduct of CRM and marketing

automation inroads is the revelation that many

companies are squandering money marketing

to faulty databases. This has forced recent

advancements in the data discipline, and

cast marketing teams as the default owners.

Data policy is coalescing slowly, with more

advanced players emphasizing acquisition.

“To gather account and contact data, put

multiple sources to work,” stated analyst

firm, SiriusDecisions, Inc. “This helps to keep

data current and complete, resulting in a rich

understanding of accounts and contacts that

enables marketing to get the right message

to the right prospect at the right time.” The

firm noted that companies earning less than

$1 billion in revenue typically lack internal

database expertise at the marketing and sales

level – where it does the most good – which

places many BtoB firms in a Catch 22. But

there are solutions.

“To make smart data investments, inventory

viable data sources to learn what’s available

internally and externally, and then investigate

the strengths and weaknesses of each source

to address specific data needs,” stated

SiriusDecisions.

Data acquisition policy and strategy are

closely linked. “BtoB companies need to

define customer creation as an enterprise

process, and not something that just happens

in marketing and sales,” said Gerry Murray,

Research Manager at IDC and author of the

previously cited IDC report. “Data acquisition

is the critical front end to that process. It

should be formally defined with process and

policy support to ensure the company gets

the most valuable data it needs, and makes

the best and fastest use of it.”

Murray said defining customer creation as

an enterprise process is a significant shift

that implies three major initiatives for senior

executives who intend to remain competitive:

1. Standardizing data;

2. Creating a multi-tiered data governance

structure; and

3. Implementing a master data management

architecture.

“To make smart data investments, inventory

viable data sources to learn what’s available

internally and externally, and then investigate

the strengths and weaknesses of each

source to address specific data needs.”

- SiriusDecisions, Inc.

The 2012 Data Acquisition Report 4

Other research supports the idea that

data standardization, governance and

management are best accomplished by

dedicated personnel equipped with business

intelligence (BI) tools. In its May 2011 report,

Business Intelligence Command and Control

for the Chief Supply Chain Officer, Aberdeen

Group found that best-in-class organizations

share common characteristics pertaining to

internal data roles and the use of technology:

• Best-in-class companies are 40% more

likely than all others (the Industry Average

and Laggard companies combined)

to have a single individual or team

responsible for collecting and managing

operational data; and

• Best-in-class companies are 72% more

likely than all others to have implemented

an operational BI solution.

New Data Acquisition Models & Methods

Legions of marketers have had bad

experiences renting and buying lists from

third party vendors. The familiar story goes

something like this: a marketer allocates

budget to buy a “qualified list from a reputable

vendor” for lead-gen purposes. Relevant

content is created based on list attributes

(vertical, demographics, titles), and emails are

sent. But open rates, click-through rates (CTR)

and prospect engagements resulting from the

campaign are dismally low. Meanwhile hard

bounces, undeliverable addresses and opt-

outs are unacceptably high. Such results have

soured many marketers on list vendors as a

group.

To restore trust in their services, some firms

are employing technology to overcome list

fatigue and data decay. In addition to frequent

list scrubbing, new algorithms are being used

for crowdsourcing, social media crawling,

keyword search and role-based profiling.

However, with providers all claiming the same

technology improvements to compensate for

past list failures, once-bitten marketers are

twice shy when buying prospect data.

Bridging this confidence gap is innovative

vendor-neutral platforms. These next-gen

data tools deliver value by blending analytics,

campaign meta-metrics and strategic insights

to more precisely select choice records from

multiple sources in a portfolio approach.

Leaders in this space, including Oceanos,

whose proprietary List Optimizer tool and

KnowledgeBank analytics capabilities allow

marketers to draw data from a selection of

name-brand BtoB databases in a preview

file format. Funds are committed only after

queries yield a fresh and precise list of net

new targets. In this way, the company’s Data

Asset Management Group partners with select

clients to provide risk mitigation, diversification

and cost certainty strategies to ensure data

investment optimization.

“We’ve been likened to a general contractor,

with the various data vendors being the sub-

contractors in that comparison,” said Brian

Hession, President of Oceanos. “Another

analogy is that we operate like a ‘data mutual

fund.’ Clients invest their annual data budget

with us and we allocate it to different data

providers based on their audience and list

To restore trust in their services,

some firms are employing technology to overcome list

fatigue and data decay.

The 2012 Data Acquisition Report 5

performance. Our network of providers

include databases that allow you to

‘purchase’ multi-channel records along with

‘rental’ sources such as trade publications,

associations/communities, research firms and

buyer files. We have the flexibility to shift a

client’s data acquisition budget as needed, so

they’re never locked into any single source.”

The ability to cull preview files of prospects

from multiple lists, rendering a single master

list before allocating marketing dollars, is a

game changer in the data acquisition realm.

Bearing this out, IDC’s report “…recommends

that list acquisition models be determined by

market strategy, intended use, pricing and

other factors that drive value. This will help

mitigate the frustrations with list quality that

can arise when sourcing multiple data types

without a formal requisitioning process or third

party expertise.”

“In the near future, marketers will look beyond

the standard contact record and will seek

“smart records,” Hession noted. “These

records will include business intelligence

(BI) in addition to the contact and business

demographic information. For example, a

smart record might include technology brands

in use and job role, along with social media

intelligence. Sales and marketing will analyze

the appended BI and extrapolate additional

intelligence.”

Both sales and marketing will seek

relationships with firms that can assemble

“smart records” and can then help them

understand its application within the marketing

and sales process. Smart records will improve

sales and marketing efficiencies and ultimately

optimize demand waterfall performance.

The ability to cull preview files of prospects

from multiple lists, rendering a single master list before allocating

marketing dollars, is a game changer in the data acquisition

realm.

The 2012 Data Acquisition Report 6

ConclusionData acquisition policy and strategy are slowly taking shape. Marketers are starting to scrutinize

data sources, separating reliable feeder channels and methods from the unreliable. One area of

concentration is the self-sourcing of prospects using web forms.

“Self-sourcing is an inherent part of most marketing and sales functions,” Murray said. “Many

companies get the majority of their contacts from web forms. However, this data is notoriously

dirty. The obviously bad entries can be vetted easily. The hard to correct issues – such as getting

personal versus business emails, company names spelled many different ways, business unit

demographics as opposed to corporate – can prevent high quality leads from being processed

effectively. As a result, self-sourcing is not the best way to get clean data into your database and

does not qualify as a best practice.”

Conversely, the “portfolio” approach to data acquisition has emerged as a best practice. In the

research brief Marketing Data Sources: The Balanced Portfolio, analyst firm SiriusDecisions, Inc.

states, “While it would be convenient to get everything from a single source, this ‘bet the farm’

model works about as well as the average single-stock portfolio.”

“Gathering data from a portfolio of sources improves the odds of success and reduces the

risk that insufficient or inaccurate data will sap the effectiveness of account-based or named

account marketing, or hinder efforts to improve overall segmentation and targeting,” according

to SiriusDecisions, Inc.

At the forefront of the portfolio data movement are companies including Oceanos, whose

proprietary technology pulls contact records from a group of reputable databases to build

hyper-efficient prospect lists. Also on the rise is the use of list/campaign metadata – aggregated

performance metrics used to optimizing strategies and lists pre-deployment.

Next-gen techniques are going a step further with a new wave of data ROI tools. One example

is the Opportunity Calculator found on the Oceanos web site. This tool takes industry averages

and actual client campaign metrics and compares the costs of vendor-neutral data acquisition

to one-off data buys and in-house list performance. Efficiencies of the portfolio approach are

compelling, especially to marketers seeking trustworthy prospect data to fuel growth.

Best practices for data acquisition and list building can be summarized as follows:

1. Assign ownership of data acquisition and management to a person or team;

2. Have a defined set of attributes for contacts you need to acquire data on. This leads to

much more effective and efficient buys;

3. Don’t use any single data source. The portfolio approach has major advantages;

4. If you don’t understand the differences between data sources – or the data acquisition

market in general – use third party expertise to bridge the gap.

The 2012 Data Acquisition Report 7

About Oceanos

Oceanos provides custom data solutions to optimize sales and marketing performance, guided

by its vision of list intelligence. The firm’s proprietary List Optimizer technology builds data

sets, from a portfolio of data providers, with unmatched precision and reach to power all types

of demand creation and database building programs. This combination of data access and

advanced search provides sales and marketing with a continual pipeline of contact and account

intelligence to support all levels of the demand waterfall. The result is a robust, repeatable,

demand creation engine.

To optimize campaign performance, Oceanos’ Data Asset Management Group works closely

with select clients to provide additional risk mitigation, diversification and cost certainty

strategies. Oceanos clients are typically large private or public companies within the software,

manufacturing, retail, business services, education, healthcare, electronics, and information

services industries. Their success has placed them on the Inc. magazine fastest growing private

company list three consecutive years.

For an independent analysis of Oceanos, reference our SiriusDecisions vendor profile:

http://www.oceanosinc.com/Oceanos_Sirius_Profile.pdf

About List Optimizer™

The List Optimizer builds custom data sets to optimize sales and marketing performance,

guided by our vision of List Intelligence. The software’s specialized search and segmentation

algorithms identify and aggregate company and contact level information from a wide portfolio

of third-party marketing and research databases. The result is a robust, repeatable, demand

creation engine to support all levels of the demand waterfall.

About DemandGen Report

DemandGen Report is a targeted e-media publication spotlighting the strategies and solutions

that help companies better align their sales and marketing organizations, and ultimately, drive

growth. A key component of our coverage focuses on the sales and marketing automation tools

that enable companies to better measure and manage their multi-channel demand generation

efforts.

411 State RT 17Suite 410 Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604

1.888.603.3626www.demandgenreport.com

Headquarters892 Plain StreetSuites 8-10Marshfield, MA 02050

781.804.1010www.oceanosinc.com