Customer acquisition data has more than proven its value as a driver for B2B business growth. But advanced new technologies are now empowering B2B companies to significantly boost their results for even greater success – from gaining a deeper understanding of their prospects; to targeting them with the best offer at their stage of the buying journey; and generating more relevancy, engagement and sales.

The catch is, making use of these innovative technologies requires cleansed accurate business contact data along with the ability to identify the right segments within that data to turn prospects into customers. Keeping that in mind, here are three top email marketing trends and technologies that our team at OMI is now using to fuel stronger customer acquisition results:

• Identifying the right bulk segment: When it comes to growing an acquisition list, we advise clients to think quality over quantity: it’s important to be laser-focused when targeting prospective new customers. At the same time, it’s a mistake to take this concept too far. And that’s why we also advise against narrowing down your target pool so much that you only have a handful of prospects identified for your email acquisition campaigns. So instead, we’ll identify a bulk target segment that is a large and statistically relevant enough channel to sustain higher email campaign volume. The result is a healthy balance of being focused while thinking big – big enough to drive enough leads, keep your sales team on track, identify actionable trends, and add a valuable volume of revenue to your business. We see this approach as key to delivering successful email results. For example, our payment processing client VyaPay is targeting a very specific segment of the business market – companies with 1-100 employees who are using QuickBooks -- with a large email acquisition campaign. After the initial campaign we’ll see what the low-hanging fruit is and then hone-in on our top prospects from there.
• Combining behavioral overlays with predictive modeling: Combining data analytics and artificial intelligence with quality customer acquisition data can significantly increase results – and take your email campaigns to the next level. Lattice Engines’ marketing applications can predict who will buy, what they will buy and when they will buy, creating a targeted database of high-quality targets. In addition, Bombora is the largest aggregator of B2B intent data, monitoring web traffic to provide sales and marketers insights about when their customers are actively searching for specific products. At OMI, we’re collaborating with a number of key clients to integrate our targeted customer acquisition data with these technologies to boost outcomes, and the results have been very promising. One of our clients, a leading telecom provider, is now testing the Lattice Engine platform. They are also working with Bombora’s intent data in combination with OMI business contact data to serve a targeted display advertising campaign. After a short period of time, the campaign has already driven a 33 x lift in campaign results!
• Leveraging customer mapping: Most people these days use multiple devices -- their laptop computer, smart phone, touch pad, etc. -- for multiple marketing touchpoints, from email and web content, to search, social media, videos, podcasts and more. The ability to identify a person and their device and deliver the right message based on their stage of the buying cycle enables maximum relevancy and interaction. Arm’s Treasure Data provides a 360-degree view of customers’ devices, times when they shop and their locations (including what the weather is like there) to enable marketers to learn about their customers, make better decisions and recommend the best products to offer in a timely way. We see this as the future of sales and marketing, and it’s already starting to take hold.

Leveraging these advanced technologies to the fullest requires high-quality, accurate data as well as the ability to track as much of the customer experience and journey as possible. The good news is that, at OMI, that’s what drives our work each day. Feel free to contact us if you’d like support from our experts – whether it’s to identify the best acquisition contacts within your target segment or to find out more about supercharging your email marketing results with the latest tech tools…or both!

Outward Media’s proven data cleansing services and targeted, accurate email data can enable you to achieve better email marketing ROI and, ultimately, convert more prospects into customers. Take a look at our case studies to find out more.