B2B Marketing Lists: The Ethical Guide To Use And Scale Your Customer Base

Building and cultivating a high ROI customer base is not an overnight task. It takes perseverance and stellar marketing efforts to nurture a pool of high-paying customers. At the same time, it's also important to ensure to do so ethically.

Having a strong marketing list gives your company a much-needed online boost. Customers that you target your marketing campaigns towards, have a great effect on your online standing and conversions.

Did you know that 81% of B2B marketers consider email newsletters as their most frequent content marketing strategy? A number that impactful reinforces the gravity of having a solid B2B email marketing list.

While there are different ways you can create a marketing list for your company ethically and legally, some choose to take a shorter route of purchasing email lists. However, bulk buying a marketing list from untrusted sources is a sure-shot way of ending up in your customers' spam box.

To avoid that from happening, let's first understand what ethical marketing is and why you need to divert your focus on cultivating morally sound marketing practices for your business.

What Is Ethical Marketing & Why Do You Need It For Your Business?

Strong ethics make up a good business. Ethical marketing is a conscious business approach that involves companies designing their pricing, strategies, and marketing initiatives in a way that is sensitive to their customers and environment. Ethical brands are mindful of the ways they advertise and present themselves in front of their audience.

Brands that follow ethical ways of marketing tend to rely on striking the right chord with their customers. They exhibit a penchant for the work they're doing and aim to follow transparent practices.

Business ethics are highly rewarding in due time. With sturdy goodwill in the market, ethical brands tend to win irrefutable support from loyal customers. Consequently, positive word-of-mouth plays in their favor with new promising leads.

While steadily building a marketing list is clearly the most ethical way of maintaining a B2B sales leads database, some companies choose to buy email lists.

But that begs the question - should you build or buy a marketing list?

Building Vs Buying Marketing Lists

Creating a list from the scratch ensures one thing for your company - you only get to engage with customers that are genuinely interested in your product. The leads that you source from a list that you've built over months are usually promising and are much more likely to convert. An email list helps you in connecting and establishing personalized relationships with customers who are receptive to the content you market.

While making a B2B company list from the ground up is the usual way-to-go, buying a marketing list can help you amplify your business to new heights!

Whether you want to invest time or need results in the quickest time, building or buying a list depends on your business goals.

Buying A Marketing List

The last thing any of us want to see in our inboxes is a promotional email from a company we don't even remember signing up to. Sucks, right? Unfortunately, that's what a lot of companies resort to in an attempt to increase their traffic.

Promotional content that is sent to an unaware user from a random email list is most likely to be frowned upon. Readers dislike it since it provides no value to them or any utility to their immediate needs.

However, what if you buy targeted email lists of customers who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer? Your content would truly engage a user with useful information and push them to click on an actionable call-to-action button. That's how you buy an email list the "right way".

How Can You Buy A List Ethically?

Now that we have established that offering exceptional value to customers is the path ahead to make up for buying a list, how can you go about it?

Find a trusted data provider: It's vital to know from where are you sourcing these email addresses. The market is brimming with fraudulent email data providers, so it's important to narrow down your options to a few reliable options. The authenticity of the data you acquire is based on the accuracy, quality, and responsive rates of the leads.

Stay far from "free" email lists: Free email lists are bad for your business. Such free databases will not help you target the right customers.

The right data provider can offer you B2B sales lead database choices according to your preferences and goals. A database provider like ReadyContacts can offer you highly targeted, validated, and quality-checked marketing lists that align perfectly with your campaign goals.

How To Convert Cold Leads To Customers With A Ready-Made Marketing List?

Reaching out to unaware customers the right way can be tricky. After you've acquired the right marketing list for your business, it's important to reach out to your customers, seeking their permission to send any promotional content to them. This, right off the bat, displays that you value your customers' time, patience, and most importantly, their consent.

Your introductory message should be crisp, informative, and problem-solving for your end-user. Tune your communications according to their preferred frequency and solution requirements.

Buying an email list can accelerate your business growth. One of the immediate advantages of buying a list is the time you save. An email list can boost your business and help you scale your customer base overnight.

With lead generation remaining one of the top challenges for businesses, buying email lists has become popular. But what's more important is the kind of marketing list you're acquiring. Is it a free email list? Or is it a targeted email marketing list? Your ready-made list of emails holds great power over the expansion of your B2B business.

Building A Marketing List

As a foolproof way of expanding your leads database, building a marketing list from A to Z is preferred over buying one by any kind of company. Why is that so? Building an email list comes with its perks.

• Caters to a targeted audience: The list narrows down your pool of customers to only the ones who are genuinely interested and invested in your business. You save on time and resources by catering to visitors who hold the potential of turning into customers.
• One-to-one connection: A marketing list that's built from scratch allows you to connect and understand your customers on a deeper level. You can target them with content that's tailor-made to their requirements. A whopping 91% of consumers believe that they are more likely to shop from brands that render relevant offers and suggestions to them. Needless to say, targeted content is preferred and well-received by your audience.

Having a targeted email marketing list may prove to be a boon for your business. It is likely to contain enough high-potential leads.

Why Building A Marketing List Will Help You Boost Your Business

Did you know that 9 out of 10 B2B businesses use email engagement as a content engagement measure? With emails remaining one of the top content marketing avenues for enterprises worldwide, having a marketing list boasts its fair share of importance.

Emails make relaying your communication easier. With no bounds on frequency or content volume, email marketing lets you connect with your audience right away. You can segregate and segment your email lists to optimize your B2B marketing; you can do it based on their purchasing history, trends, and other demographic factors. This allows you to customize your offerings for quicker and smoother conversions.

A marketing list also works well in bringing back churned customers. Had a user who visited your website but didn't convert? Reach out to them directly addressing their pain points and the solutions you have to offer to them.

In short, a targeted email marketing list can go a long way in retaining customers, acquiring new ones, and cross-selling.

7 Awesome Ways To Ethically Grow Your Marketing List

Now that you know all the great things a solid email list can do for you, how do you go about making one, ethically? Here are some ways you can do it!

1. Onboard all your present customers onto your email list

Your current customer pool is the biggest resource for revenue generation for your company. You don't want to lose out on them while creating your marketing list. Update your email marketing platform with their addresses or contact them if you don't already have their IDs. Segment your customers to save on marketing hassles you might encounter in the future.

2. Add subscription pop-ups and forms on your blogs and website

Your website will most likely be the first touchpoint with your brand for many new customers. Create compelling CTAs and include these sign-up forms on your homepage, specific product pages, and blogs.

Likewise, it's a regular practice by most top-notch B2B businesses to include pop-ups in their blogs. It's ideal to put the pop-up in a place that warrants asking for an email.

3. Make your landing pages interactive with quizzes/games

Another off-beat yet captivating way to get visitors to sign up is by including interactive quizzes or games on your webpages. However, to get the results, they will need to provide you with their email IDs. People love analysis and computed outcomes of their choices.

Why else do you think BuzzFeed quizzes are so popular?

4. Host webinars or online events

People are always looking for intuitive insights and trends that can help their business flourish. Hosting an event or a webinar is a great way to attract new names to your marketing list.

5. Add sign up links in email signatures

Exhaust every opportunity to connect and interact with your customers. You probably already communicate with them via emails. Whether it's an introductory email or a query resolution, do not miss out on a possible sign-up by not including a CTA in your email signatures.

6. Add a CTA to your social media

To no great surprise, social media decidedly affects consumers' online behavior with brands. Apart from your website, your social media pages are probably the second place where potential customers would visit to know about your brand. Put persuasive CTAs on your social handles.

7. Include content upgrades

Content upgrades work the best with long-form content on your website. These are bonus content pieces that visitors can get access to by exchanging their email IDs. They can be email templates, checklists, video or audio resources, and quick start guides, to name some. Everyone likes free stuff.

Conclusion

Whether you want to steadily grow your customer base or want to take the bypass with a ready-to-use email list, providing value and genuine solutions to customers is the way to go. While buying a marketing list may sound tempting, don't forget to do your homework to not end up getting blacklisted and in the spam box. Either way, having a dedicated B2B email list can be a game-changer for your business.

ReadyContacts is an emerging data engine helping marketing and sales teams scale with its unique and robust contact data capabilities. Backed by multiple Fortune-500 and upcoming startups, Ready is the one-stop solution for personalized, accurate, and targeted databases.