Dataphoria are approached continuously with requests for B2B email data for acquisition campaigns. We are big fans of emailing customers, partners and prospective clients, but we are not so convinced about cold email acquisition campaigns.

It makes sense when you first consider B2B an acquisition email campaign, as you are saving money on printing, paper and postage / calling. But beware of false economies and risks.

There are many challenges in this space, including:

• Compliance
• Data availability and segmentation options
• Responsiveness

Compliance:

While many companies claim to offer compliant email data for your campaigns, there are very few opt-in, 3rd party compliant email databases available for B2B campaign at present in Australia.

When evaluating the options, we often find that they are not compliant because:

• There was no opt in to direct communications by the supplier for 3rd party offers
• There was no opt in to communications by clients of the supplier with direct offers
• There was no opt in at all and inferred consent is not possible
• The supplier suggests the use of inferred consent, but the emails have been electronically harvested, making them non-compliant for that reason
• They breach privacy guidelines because the data was collected under the guise of another purpose
• The challenge for our clients when presented with these options directly is that, even where the supplier is convinced that the solution is compliant, they are often not.

It is important to remember that you will be responsible for a breach of the Act, so it is your responsibility to ensure that the campaign is acceptable.

Data availability and segmentation options:

Dataphoria have access to hundreds of thousands of business decision makers for B2B mail and call campaigns, but email options are quite limited, meaning that it is unlikely that the medium will enable you to reach your full target market.

When planning a B2B acquisition campaign, it is always essential to consider who to target very carefully.
When Dataphoria build data plans for direct mail / telemarketing campaign, we can present our clients have a wealth of options for selection, normally centred around:

• Decision maker type / level of responsibility
• Business size (using number of employees / annual revenue / home-based as a guide)
• Industry
• Location

With low volumes of data held and often little known about the people on the lists, smart selection becomes difficult for email, which means that savings from a mailing perspective are outweighed by wastage in terms of targeting and a limited target market.

Responsiveness:

There are 2 types of B2B email acquisition campaigns:

• Campaigns where you purchase data and market directly, based on inferred consent
• Campaigns where you instruct a supplier to send an email to their member-base, including your offer
  With both types of campaign, a high level of engagement between the recipient and the sender will be essential to the success of the campaign.

I’m pretty sure I am not the only business decision maker that receives far too many emails each day. I find myself setting up filters to move regular emails from 3rd parties into mailboxes I rarely read and then I prioritise my emails in order of importance, from client emails, through colleagues, to suppliers and finally friends. If I find time, I may read a LinkedIn update / a promotion from a favourite retailer, but unsolicited email is normally deleted without being opened / assumed to be a scam.

Email has a very short life-span – if I don’t want to read it now, it won’t be read.

Direct mail, on the other hand, is normally left to one side until I have time to review it when convenient.

This has led me to consider B2B email marketing from a simple mathematical perspective:

• Take X as the cost per email rented
• Assume the cost to rent a mailing address is also X (it is normally similar)
• Consider the cost of paper, print and postage of a letter to be Y
• Therefore X + Y is the total cost per mailer sent Vs. X for an email
• Take X+Y / X as the factor for which the mailing campaign needs to work harder than the email campaign to be more cost effective

In a basic example, an email / mailing address may cost $0.50 and post and print of a postcard may cost $1. Therefore the total mailer cost will be $1.50 Vs. $0.50 for the email. Therefore, the mailing campaign needs to be 3 times more responsive than the email campaign to be as cost-effective.

Now ask yourself if you would be 3 times as likely to read and respond to a mailing communication than an unsolicited email. If the answer is yes, my suggestion would be to run the campaign via snail mail.

In conclusion, while there are certainly cost benefits for communicating with your target market with email, for cold acquisition campaigns, you may find the options to be more of a risky white elephant than a silver bullet.