How to Build an Email List for B2B and B2C
Step 1: Specific to Business-to-Business (B2B)
- Define your ideal prospects – who are likely to buy your product/services
- Set criteria and filters – company criteria (firmographic – size, LOB, Location, Markets, product/service, financials, company purchase pattern, etc.) and contact criteria (job role, designation, location, authority, etc.)
- Define the data fields you want including Email id and first name (typically emails are addressed by first name)
- Use your in-house team or outsource to a data vendor the task of sourcing new email ids; as well as appending your existing data
- Verify Email id through verifier tool (many data vendors provide verification technology). A few vendors provide verification of email data through tele-calling
- Once the list is built – tag and segment for your various marketing campaigns
- Certain country regulations require ‘opt-in’ for B2B commercial email too. For such countries one needs to deploy a data provider having experience in generating consent based data.
Step 2 : Specific to Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
- Building individual consumer email list is more difficult as well as governed by stringent regulations
- Best practice is to build ‘Opt-in’ Email list through various channels like ‘point of sales consent’ (requesting permission during an online or offline purchase), Online initiatives like Sweepstakes, Social media activities like surveys, contents, Polls, etc. The basic idea is to incentivize/ reward consumers/prospective buyers for sharing their information as well as inputs.