In this blog, we’re going to answer the following:
If you’re a RevOps leader, read on! 👇
Put simply, contact data is all the nuggets of information you can gather about prospects and customers. Things like names, email addresses, and phone numbers (more on them later).
It’s the fuel that keeps your lead generation engine motoring along – after all, without contact data, you’ll never know who your team should be targeting, and how.
So it almost goes without saying that your sales and marketing teams need to be working with the highest quality contact data.
We’ll show you how that works later - but first, a little data 101.
In B2B, there are five types of contact data. They are:
The most basic type of contact data. This category includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, locations, employment and skills.
Demographic data comes from a variety of sources, including government agencies, surveys, and censuses.
This is contact information for organisations. This category includes company names, locations, industries, headcounts and revenue information such as ARR.
Firmographic data comes from a variety of sources, including public records, business directories, and B2B contact databases.
This is the type of tech and software your prospects use on an everyday basis. This information is gold dust for B2B revenue teams selling cloud-based products and SaaS.
Technographic data comes from a variety of sources, including online tracking tools, public records, and B2B data providers.
Often called sales triggers, this is data that refers to an event which could signify the prospect is ready to buy. Examples include a company location move, company acquisition, new funding rounds and a new recruitment drive.
Chronographic data is sourced in many different ways, such as:
The latest and greatest type of contact data. Intent data tracks the online behaviour of web users and makes predictions based on the content they consume.
Intent data comes from a variety of sources, including first-party data, third-party data providers, and online tracking tools. Cognism has partnered with the market leader Bombora to provide intent data to our customers.
Contact data is collected in two ways.
This is where data is freely available, such as websites, LinkedIn, blogs, press releases and videos. Contact data from public sources tends to be incomplete and unreliable.
This is where data is kept away from public view, such as websites behind paywalls, financial and market intelligence or data as a service (DaaS) providers like Cognism. Contact data from private sources is usually reliable and highly actionable.
For RevOps professionals, it’s often difficult to work with contact data when it comes from all these disparate sources. Collecting it and analysing it can be very time-consuming.
That’s why it’s essential to implement a data orchestration process. It delivers the following benefits:
Data orchestration ensures that data is consistent across different systems and platforms.
This consistency is essential for accurate reporting and analysis, as well as for providing a unified view of the customer journey.
By implementing a data orchestration process, RevOps can ensure that their company’s data is clean, accurate, and up-to-date.
This is important for making informed business decisions and ensuring that marketing and sales efforts are targeting the right audience.
Data orchestration saves time and resources by automating data workflows and reducing the need for manual data entry and processing.
This frees up staff to focus on higher-value tasks and strategic initiatives.
Data orchestration enables RevOps to combine data from multiple sources and systems, providing a more complete picture of customer behaviour and preferences.
This can lead to better insights and more effective marketing and sales strategies.
When RevOps uses data orchestration to streamline their company’s data management processes, the company gains a competitive advantage. It’s now more agile, more responsive, and better informed than its competitors.
Using inaccurate or out-of-date contact data can lead to serious problems for your revenue team.
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So you can see how having bad contact data is about much more than just cold calling the wrong people. It can have a real, lasting, material effect on your business, from signing new deals all the way to hiring new staff.
Look for warning signs that show you if your contact data needs an overhaul.
Here is the Cognism checklist:
If the answer to all these is “yes!”, it’s time to start improving your contact data.
There are so many B2B contact data providers in the marketplace, all saying that they’re the biggest or the most accurate. How do you know who to choose?
It’s simple - by judging each provider on these six criteria:
Make sure the data comes from well-known, reputable sources.
Data that has been self-entered (e.g. LinkedIn) is most likely to be correct.
What can you do with your contact data?
For example, how many data points can you filter down to make an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?
Are your prospects in buying mode?
Ensure your data can tell you when your prospects are likely to be interested in receiving a call.
The best contact data contains a large number of data points.
With deep contact data, you can find out as much as possible about your prospects.
Does the data show the intent of your prospects?
What’s their readiness to buy?
Your data must comply with regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA.
The systems you use to store that data must also be in compliance.
Once you’ve sourced a reputable provider, and you’ve got quality contact data in your organisation, it’s time to move to the next level.
Your salespeople and marketers can (and must) use the same data to inform their decision-making. It’s optimal to develop a B2B data strategy that works for each part of your revenue team.
There are several attributes your data strategy must have in order to be successful:
Your data strategy must align with your company’s broader objectives. How is your data going to help your business achieve goals and reach milestones?
Have a plan to install the data and any accompanying tech. Thoroughly test any tools before rolling them out to the business.
Devise a process for your salespeople and marketers to access the data. How will each team and job function use it?
Provide training to your team on how to use the tech, best practices, and any B2B data compliance requirements.
Develop strategies for data enrichment. Contact data is never static; you must review and update it regularly.
Codify a playbook for evaluating the impact of your data on the organisation, including ROI.
With these components in place, your business will reap the benefits that high-quality contact data can bring.
Speaking of which...
High-quality contact data delivers several key advantages, not just for revenue operations, but for sales and marketing too.
With improved data comes improved territory planning. It enables you to calculate your total addressable market more accurately, unearthing insights that help you optimise your market coverage and increase conversations.
Quality contact data also makes lead scoring and routing more accurate, meaning that the right prospects are assigned to the right reps at the right time - when they’re highly engaged with your brand and ready to buy!
Your marketers will be able to create a narrow, detailed ICP. Then, they will find it easier to craft customer-centric, personalised content which speaks to your ICP’s actual pain points and truly connects with them.
Data will also point you in the right direction regarding which channels are best for content distribution.
Quality contact data means your sales reps will spend more time talking to prospects and less time struggling to connect.
They’ll also be able to take advantage of sales triggers and intent data; these give SDRs something to talk about with prospects, at the times when they’re most receptive.
When you work with Cognism, you will…
Speak with one of our data experts today 👇