Which supplier of business to business data is the best seems like a simple enough question. But a new study that compared five information sources offers complex answers.
“Years ago, when choices were limited, the world was either compiled or co-op database,” Bernice Grossman, president of DMRS Group Inc., said about B-to-B data sources. “Before, we had title information, and maybe we had a name. But we could use a title and phone numbers and a mailing address to do our work.”
Not anymore. With the advent of e-mail marketing, and with mobile marketing coming to the fore, communication choices have gotten more sophisticated and, according to a report Grossman and Chief Marketer contributor and consultant Ruth P. Stevens have authored, sources of B-to-B data have become Balkanized.
Grossman and Stevens analyzed business data on a wide set of criteria from Demandbase, Dun & Bradstreet, infoGroup, Jigsaw and NetProspex. For instance, all five were asked to state the number of U.S. firms they had within 10 industries. InfoGroup had the highest counts on six of them, with D & B’s Selectory reporting top quantities in the remaining four categories. The number of records returned by the other three data suppliers trailed these two by wide margins.
This should be a fairly cut-and-dried result. More is better for those wanting to use spray-and-pray marketing, right?
The problem is that marketers’ needs vary widely, both in their general business rules and within specific campaigns. Consider firmagraphics – company demographics, such as the number of trucks in its fleet, or Mac computers, or physical locations.
“If I have a million of what I don’t want over here, and 100,000 of what I want over here, which am I going to take?” asked Grossman.
Depending on which element is crucial to a marketer, any of the above data firms – or another source, such as a response file from a trade publication that addresses a specific audience – might be the best source of prospects.
But marketing is aimed at individuals, not trucks. When Grossman and Stevens looked at total contact counts at ten major companies, Demandbase and Jigsaw most often provided the highest quantities.
“B-to-B data is so much more complicated [than consumer data] in that you need to send to every purchaser and influencer,” Grossman observed.
So Demandbase and Jigsaw are the best sources of B-to-B data, right?
Wrong. Or, at least, not necessarily. Because depth of contact information is one thing: Completeness is another. Grossman and Stevens found ten individuals willing to serve as test subjects. Their names were given to each of the five participating companies, who were then asked to provide whatever data they had on all ten.
These results were bumped up against correct information supplied by the individuals themselves, which included title, address, phone number and e-mail addresses.
In this the results were hit or miss. Mail data had the greatest level of completeness and accuracy. Title data was largely accurate, although less so than address information. But phone numbers and e-mail information reported had some gaps in it, especially for the nonprofit, academic and government test subjects. And occasionally the numbers provided were general switchboard numbers, not direct lines to the individuals.
The lack of coverage in e-mail addresses is especially disturbing in light of mobile marketing’s increasing prominence. Grossman and Stevens chose not to ask about mobile device coverage in their current report, but this data point will become an increasingly important factor.
“Most of us can be reached anywhere,” Grossman said. “We make business decisions and do business in environments we never thought we would. We read purchase orders while on Amtrak. If I am in construction, I will want an SMS message. Is something out of stock? Shipping today? You bet I want to know!”
But mobile coverage, it seems, is going to take some effort on the part of B-to-B data providers. “There are unbelievable opportunities for vendors to provide to the B-to-B community that which has been available to consumer marketers,” Grossman said.
