Buying Leads Lists
 – the good, the bad and the ugly

Buying a list of contacts is usually cheaper and always faster than growing your list of lead data from scratch.

For these reasons, it has a place in your sales strategy. Purchasing leads can be especially handy for organisations who don’t necessarily have the capacity to top up their sales pipelines organically—like start-ups, for example.

But not all lists are made equal. Keep these three points in mind before you buy:

1.What kind of data is this?

Only buy relevant data.

Long lists of general contact information are unlikely to support your business. If you’re going to buy a list of leads, you need to make sure you’re actually getting contact details associated with people who are actually part of your target market, and not just Aunt Martha from Facebook—unless Aunt Martha is your target market, of course. But even if she is, you’d be better off getting a list of Aunt Marthas, rather than relying on pure chance to deliver you her contact details!

If you purchase list data, we strongly recommend only seeking out lists you can buy already segmented in ways that are useful to you. Maybe this means having contacts by job role, or by industry.

Doing this will also prevent you from paying for lists with lots of contacts you’re not going to use.

2. Where did that data come from?

The thing is, data degrades over time. Even if it was accurate to begin with—which is a big assumption—it won’t be as accurate after a couple of years. So unless you know for sure that the company you’re buying from regularly checks and updates their lists, don’t even bother. If you want the value of the list to match what’s advertised, get data that’s recently been verified.

Data quality in general is a huge problem when you purchase lists of leads. In one test published in the Harvard Business Review, reviewers reported that the accuracy of demographic data on some purchased lists was quite literally worse than guessing.

So, when you buy a list, make sure the organisation you’re purchasing from is reputable, regularly updates their data, and uses ethical and compliant methods of data collection and dissemination.

Data quality is one of the biggest advantages of platforms like MarketBase+, where you can log in and access refreshed, up-to-date data at any time, backed by our data guarantee.

How will you use it?

We know that sometimes, it might seem most expedient to just load your contact data all into an electronic messaging platform and fire off a shiny marketing email to everyone on the list.

Avoid giving into that temptation. For a start, you’d immediately risk falling afoul of spam legislation. But secondly, it’s intrusive. Your recipients will like you less if you do it this way, and people are not likely to buy things from organisations they dislike.

You can get a lot more value out of your list if you take it just a bit slower. Remember, this is a cold list. You’re a stranger to these contacts (for now). Buying a list of lead data is a short cut to contact, but it’s not a short cut to familiarity with your leads.

You already have their contact details, so find out more about each person you intend to contact before you reach out to them. You can look them up on professional registers or take a peek at social media and learn what you can about them.

Learning about your contacts will help you tailor your approach to them, which lets you put your best foot forward when you contact them.