Email Address Database: Ultimate Guide for Marketers

What is an Email Address Database?

The list of contacts you keep in your email application? That is, in a sense, a database of email addresses. However, we’re more interested in an email list that contains contact information for a large number of prospective clients: sales leads, in other words. 

For a recruitment agency, leads may consist of local companies that frequently have to fill positions. In your case, they could be the pool of subscribers to your company newsletter. In either case, we’re only interested in a record of people or companies who are likely to buy from you in future. These are most likely to respond positively to the right kind of message.

Now, some level of personalization is essential for targeted marketing campaigns. To make this possible, information like each prospect’s purchase history, demographic info, geographic location, and so on also forms part of a marketing email database. Other things that differentiate this kind of data set include:

• An email address database is specifically designed to facilitate communication with sales leads.
• It may be kept in a spreadsheet, but this quickly becomes cumbersome; such a database can more easily be stored in various formats like CSV or SQL.
• Whichever format you choose, make sure it integrates with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems for better data management. The whole purpose of this database is to help make sales, not serve as a general repository of email addresses.
• Legal data protection requirements are more stringent for lists of addresses used for marketing; in many countries, a deliberate opt-in from users is required.
• Any marketing email database should be regularly updated to ensure accuracy. Keeping other contact lists organized matters much less, but sending spam to people outside your target audience will heavily impact your deliverability rates.

Why Businesses Need a Database of Emails

It could be that you still think email marketing doesn’t align with your company’s culture or way of doing business. Still, you should be aware of how a well-maintained email database can simplify a sales manager’s life:

• Quick results: Let’s say you’re entering a new market. Typically, you’re looking at a lengthy period for localization and networking before establishing brand awareness, but this doesn’t have to be the case when you can simply grab a list of suitable prospects from a B2B lead generation company.
• Efficient communication: Every so often, you need to get a message out to numerous parties, quickly. For instance, imagine you’re running a time-limited promotion or introducing a new product line. Informing all your contacts with a bulk email is much easier than contacting them one by one.
• Data-driven: Far too often, it’s almost impossible to figure out if your marketing and advertising budget is being spent efficiently. This isn’t the case with email: metrics like open rates help in tracking and analyzing how well each campaign is going. You can then apply these lessons to increase the ROI (Return On Investment) of future initiatives.

It’s not hard to find examples of successful email marketing campaigns; email databases are a mainstay of lead generation and customer retention in all kinds of  markets. Chances are that one of these will point you in the right direction, serving as inspiration for your own initiatives. 

Netflix, for example, automatically personalizes their messages based on shows users have watched, using these insights into customer behavior to improve their targeting. Slack and Airtable regularly contact corporate clients about new features and online seminars on using their products most effectively. charity: water sends donors updates clearly showing how their contributions are benefiting specific projects.

Of course, trying to emulate the successes other companies have achieved with email outreach doesn’t make much sense if you don’t have a database to begin with. If this is what’s holding you back, you can consider purchasing however many leads you want from a company like BookYourData. This is because of their unique pay-as-you-go model: you don’t have to spend a large chunk of money on a bulk purchase, nor do you have to sign up for a long-term subscription you may end up not using.

[CTA1]

How to Build and Grow an Email Database

While an accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive email marketing database is a tremendous tool and can be exported to various email marketing platforms to start automated campaigns today, you shouldn’t underestimate the work involved in curating one. Your email list needs regular maintenance to remove duplicates and should be backed up to prevent data loss, among other periodic management tasks.

You’ll also need to put measures in place to source new leads’ contact information (and their consent to being contacted). This, for many companies, is the first and major hurdle to forging digital connections with potential customers; let’s look at some actionable strategies and best practices for expanding your email database:

Create High-Quality Content

As the saying goes: if you create a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Of course, most of your prospects probably aren’t struggling with rodent infestations, but the principle remains sound.

What we’re talking about here are inbound leads: individuals and companies who find you without being contacted first. Many of these first get to know you based on what’s hosted on your website or a social media account. If they like what they see, they’ll want more of the same; if your content is insipid, irrelevant, or badly presented, you’re only sending them to a competitor.

Researching your audience to determine what kinds of topics they care about is a good first step. Then, come up with something that adds tangible value to them instead of simply writing a puff piece on your company. Make sure the headline catches the attention and indicates exactly what you’re talking about, include appropriate images, videos, and infographics, and help people find your content by including popular keywords related to the subject.

Use Lead Magnets

“Lead magnets” are simply types of content that are especially valuable to potential leads. The key is this: if you’re known for creating high-quality written content, prospects will generally be willing to leave their details in return for being able to download these lead magnets.

If your business is consulting, your customers will probably be interested in research reports you’ve generated in-house. Other kinds of lead magnets include video tutorials (if you supply gadgets to service businesses), online courses (for more complex products), design guides (for engineering businesses), and free consultations (if you provide a unique service).

Optimize Sign-Up Forms

All your content creation efforts will be for nothing, though, if your email list’s sign-up process is too confusing and cumbersome. The process of entering your contact details should be as painless as possible: the form should be simple, display correctly on mobile devices, and provide a clear value proposition to the user.

At the same time, a well-designed sign-up form also helps in organizing customer data efficiently. Each address, for example, needs to be validated for the correct email format, perhaps by an API (Application Protocol Interface) connecting your web form plugin to your CRM.

Here’s an example of a good form design, in this case, for a financial information service:

Note how simple it is, while also providing social proof and, through the “I agree…” checkbox, solicits user consent and confirms user data’s security.

Leverage Social Media

If you’re eager to build an email marketing database as quickly as possible, you may be tempted to turn to some websites where you can buy leads in bulk. This can work, but also implies some pitfalls in areas like data quality and remaining compliant with laws like GDPR.

Addresses you collect yourself tend to be more valuable, and you can increase the rate at which you get them using your favorite social media platform. The same rules that guide your content marketing apply: tailor your posts to the target audience, push your lead magnets, and make sure to engage with your followers at every opportunity.

UAV Coach, which offers drone pilot training, massively expanded their email list with high-value prospects by combining Facebook advertising with a contest featuring a drone as prize. Travel advisors LesFrenchies converted many of their almost 100k followers into subscribers by aggressively promoting lead magnets hosted on their website and elsewhere on social media. 

There are numerous ways to grow your email list through Facebook, Pinterest and other channels. A little creativity goes a long way; just keep in mind what you have to work with and how you want your brand to be perceived.

Host Contests and Giveaways

One tried-and-trusted tactic to expand your email database relies on giving away free stuff in exchange for addresses. While offering an attractive prize that’s relevant to your customers is a must, you also need to promote these contests to the largest possible number of potential leads if expanding your database is the goal:

• Make sure the prize or reward incentivizes the right people, like a free drone for people interested in learning how to fly one. The actual cost to you doesn’t need to be all that high, like when offering free consultations.
• Structure the contest in such a way that participants are encouraged to share content created by themselves, like short videos of them using your product. This way, they start doing some of your marketing for you.
• Get the word out! Give the contest some exposure on all channels you control: social media, your blog, online industry forums, and your company newsletter.

Partner with Other Businesses

Every marketing manager should devote a portion of their work week to networking within their industry. Though this won’t necessarily cause sales leads to fall into your lap, but there are other advantages, including access to cross-promotion opportunities. The key thing is to identify a company serving a target market that overlaps your own. Then, they may let you piggyback on their existing B2B email database and introduce you to their existing customers.

Of course, any such collaboration should comply with data protection regulations. Aside from selling a product or service that complements your own, there also needs to be alignment between your respective brands and values. You’ll also need to hash out exactly what each of you expects from the other: as you add new prospects to your own email list, for instance, are you expected to share them with your partner?

Use Pop-Ups and Slide-Ins

Like spam emails, these website elements have something of a bad reputation for being intrusive and annoying. However, there is a right way to use them to build engagement and expand your email database, without alienating potential customers:

• Be clear about what you’re offering in exchange for prospects opting in, perhaps access to a lead magnet or event you’re hosting.
• Make them easy to close…if someone isn’t currently interested, they shouldn’t have to spend time hunting that little “x”.
• Use welcome and exit-intent pop-ups strategically. A visitor about to leave your page has already had a chance to digest its content and may just need a little nudge to convert, while a new visitor may want to be told about what to expect.

Collect Emails Offline

If you have a guest book at your reception desk, does it include a space for visitors’ email addresses? Are all the business cards your sales reps are handed converted into a format that can be synchronized with your CRM system and mass mailing software?

The best lead lists are often those that incorporate information gained from unconventional sources. So, by all means, harvest email addresses at trade shows, run offline surveys and contests, and ask people to sign up for your newsletter in pamphlets, on the cover of user manuals, and on keychains, water bottles, and other giveaway items.

Segment and Personalize

We’re mostly focusing on how to collect email addresses for your marketing database, but let’s spare a thought for how you’ll actually use these. The important takeaway is that cold emails addressed to: “Dear Sir/Madam” don’t get much traction: the text, subject line, and other elements have to be adapted to let the recipient know that you’re speaking to them in particular.

This kind of personalization starts with segmenting your address list by industry niche, company size, recipient demographic information, and any other data you can lay your hands on. This is one reason why BookYourData’s granular filtering abilities are so useful: instead of downloading a batch of all suitable leads, you can specify which ones you’re interested in and segment your email database from the get-go.

Use Marketing Automation

Segmentation also allows businesses to automate their email communications by using a cold emailing software package. Though these tools aren’t magic and require some skill to use to their full potential, they can save hundreds of marketing man-hours by simplifying the task of collecting, organizing, validating, and finally contacting email addresses.

In addition, they allow you to track the performance of your outreach efforts in real time, allowing you to course-correct if something isn’t working and reinforce what does. Which platform you’ll choose depends on what functionality is important to you:

• Outreach: Built for larger companies, Outreach offers a solid CRM system on top of comprehensive cold-emailing capabilities and personalization tools.
• Smartlead.ai: Smartlead is popular among smaller businesses, not least because of attractive pricing models. However, it’s also useful for email marketing at scale. Between improving deliverability rates and its user-friendly analytics suite, you can’t go wrong.
• Mailshake: This is a full-featured mass mailing and database administration tool. It allows effective personalization based on lead segmentation and also makes it easy to schedule an email sequence in advance.
• Drip: Offers a unique, dynamic approach to contact segmentation, for example, changing each prospect’s personalization options based on behavioral triggers.

How to Get Email Database for Free

It is indeed possible to harvest email addresses without paying a cent – most of the techniques mentioned above require at least a little outlay. You can, for example, scrape contact details from company websites and industry forums, manually or using a tool like Email Extractor, or see if there’s an industry directory available for download.

However, while saving money remains a good thing, you need to be aware of the value you receive and any associated hidden costs. Simply put, a lot of the leads you gather in this way won’t put you in touch with the right people and many addresses will no longer be active. Confirming and validating each (and ensuring their sources are in compliance with anti-spam laws) can eat up a lot of resources. Often, buying a list of verified prospects from a B2B email list provider is just simpler and more cost-effective.

Types of Email Address Databases

By now, you know that your database should be segmented to enhance email personalization. Going a step further, you may even choose to split your database into one or more classes in order to ensure you provide the most relevant messaging for each group.

Different recipients may fall into one or more of the following categories:

• Corporate Email Database: This lists the addresses of top-level decision-makers; those who need to sign off on large, strategically important purchasing deals. Their level of influence and “big-picture” perspective makes them valuable B2B leads.
• Business Email Address Database: This email list is used to reach out to mid-level managers, like those in charge of specific departments. These individuals often possess considerable domain knowledge and are acutely aware of their own operational pain points, so they’ll respond to marketing messages tailored to these.
• IT Email Database: If your product involves software and other technological tools, a sale is only possible once the customer understands how it works. Such a sale is therefore often championed by a prospect who gets its inner workings and how it can integrate with existing systems. Even if they don’t possess much official clout, those responsible for IT issues are often useful contacts.
• Company Email Database: Sometimes, it’s just not possible to get a valid address for the individual within the organization you wish to convert into a customer. In this case, you may have to resort to mailing a generic address, perhaps one starting with info@ or contact@.

Optimize Your Email Database for Sales and Marketing

So, you’ve created email database. Even better, you’ve come up with a plan to steadily expand it, made a start on an intelligent scheme to segment it, and are about to sent your first batch of cold emails. So far, so good, but now what? 

People new to digital marketing sometimes make the mistake of thinking about building an email list as if it were a one-time task. In reality, your sales lead database is a living, breathing organism and requires constant care.

Aside from ensuring a steady influx of new prospects (the above tips and methods should help you with this), you have to actively maintain its data quality and usability. Periodically retarget inactive subscribers: just because they’re cold leads doesn’t mean they won’t warm up in future. Remove duplicate entries from time to time, and remember that any email database must be secured to protect against data breaches.

On a similar note, use the analytics capabilities of your CRM and cold emailing software suite. If it comes functionality like A/B testing, learn how to make use of it. This is your most powerful tool when it comes to optimizing your email content.

In particular, you should compare the effectiveness of different CTAs (Calls To Action) – changing a single sentence can improve a message’s effectiveness considerably. You can also set things up to identify promising leads by monitoring user behavior. If they open a message, you can retarget them automatically.

Book Your Data: Find the Best Email Database

For better or for worse, there’s no shortage of lead generation services in today’s marketplace. In fact, it’s sometimes hard to figure out what exactly makes some of them stand out. Still, whether you’re building an email list from scratch or expanding an existing one, you can’t just pick one at random and hope for the best. 

Some, for instance, don’t exactly comply with laws like GDPR, and the ensuing fines can seriously harm your bottom line. Others are happy to supply you with a mass of addresses for cheap, but can’t certify that these are accurate and usable.

By contrast, reputable data providers’ results can be filtered based on user preferences and contain a minimum of irrelevant and undeliverable email addresses. One of the leading ones is called BookYourData, with several industry-leading features:

• Guaranteed 97%+ accuracy rate – pay only for usable leads.
• Robust real-time address verification – significantly reduce your bounce rate and improve your sender reputation.
• Tiered pricing and volume discounts – good value for money whether you need 10 or 10,000 new leads.
• Huge and ever-expanding database – Over 500 million leads, of which at least 250 million fall into the B2B category.

The Long and Short of Email Marketing Databases

• Every business, large or small, needs an email database if they want to practice effective outreach marketing.
• Though building one from scratch takes a while, you can follow certain tried-and-trusted techniques to start today.
• Just collecting a large number of email addresses doesn’t do much good, though. Your database needs to be relevant to your industry, consist of genuine addresses, and be maintained over time.
• In case you’ve been neglecting this marketing essential (and even if you just need to improve its impact), purchasing an email list from a lead generation service is often the most economical option.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it Legal to Buy an Email Database?

With certain caveats, it’s entirely legal to buy an email list. However, you are responsible for ensuring that your chosen lead provider platform follows ethical business practices. This applies especially if you wish to do business in jurisdictions like California and the European Union – paying a little extra for legally compliant leads is cheap compared to the fines you may otherwise face.

Is a Free Email Database Reliable?

Getting addresses for nothing seems attractive on the surface. However, free email databases have a reputation for including a large proportion of outdated, inaccurate, and irrelevant addresses. Fixing these shortcomings often entails heavy ancillary costs. You can’t depend on their addresses being current, deliverable, or associated with the individuals you actually want to reach, meaning a lot of extra manual work for sales reps.

How to Ensure the Quality of an Email Database?

If you’re looking to buy an email list, lead generation services (like BookYourData) that offer free samples demonstrate a certain confidence in their product and allow you to “try before you buy”.  Addresses gained from less reliable sources require you to use a third-party email verification service and manual outreach to check that you’re actually talking to the people you need to contact.

What Tools Can Help Manage My Email Database?

Most CRM and cold email software packages have some functionality when it comes to maintaining and expanding your email database. Tools worth looking into include Hiver, Zendesk, Brevo, and Boomerang.

Is Email Database Marketing Effective?

Email marketing isn’t always simple. However, once you’ve learned the ropes and combine a high-quality database with the right lead-generation tools, it is still one of the best items in a digital marketer’s toolbox. You definitely need to check it out if budget constraints are a factor. In fact, its ROI is commonly estimated at anything between 3,600% and 4,200%, which is nothing to sneeze at.

[CTA1]

[CTA2]