online sources of b-to-b data: a comparative analysis - 2010 edition

Online SOurceS Of B-tO-B Data:

a cOmparative analySiS, 2010 eDitiOn

By Bernice GrOSSman & ruth p. StevenS march 2010

BuSineSS-tO-BuSineSS DataBaSe market inG

E x Ecuti v E summ a ry

An update to research on data sources published in 2009, this white paper evaluates the volume

and accuracy of B-to-B marketing data provided by five suppliers. Like the 2009 results, data

coverage and accuracy varied widely among vendors. Thus, we continue to urge marketers who

order compiled data to ask very carefully about the compilation practices and policies of prospective

vendors. We also strongly recommend that marketers conduct a pre-test of the data to assess its

applicability to their particular marketing need.

OnlinE sOurcE s Of B-tO-B Data: a cOmpar ativE analysis, 2010 EDitiOn

1

ccess to complete and accurate information about customers and prospects is more important than ever to business marketers. In the last year, much has happened in the world of B-to-B compiled data. Suppliers who compile business data via the Internet continue to grow their files, and develop new ways to package and present their information. But the traditional B-to-B data compilers have seen declining sales and considerable restructuring and consolidation during the economic downturn.

In light of these changes, we decided to conduct an update of our 2009 research about online sources of B-to-B data. We invited a variety of well-known and reputable vendors to answer a series of questions about their data and their business practices.

We would like to express our deep appreciation to the five vendors who agreed to participate:

• Demandbase • Jigsaw

• D&BSelectory • NetProspex

• Infogroup

thE scOpE anD intEnt Of thE 2010 stuDy

We followed the same approach as last year in order to address the perennial questions that concern business marketers about data volume, completeness and accuracy. We asked the vendors to provide company counts in a selection of critical industry sectors, plus contact counts for specific companies, and complete records on individual business people.

We specified the same ten industries as in the 2009 study, and asked the vendors to tell us how many companies they had in each of the ten, as indicated by SIC. For the contact data, however, this year we selected a different set of well-known firms in each of the ten industries.

We also recruited ten new business people in a variety of industries and in various job categories to agree to serve as this year’s guinea pigs. We are grateful to these brave souls for their generous support of this study.

A

Onl ine SOurceS Of B-tO-B Data: a cOmpar at ive analyS iS , 20 10 eD it iOn

2

inDi v iDua l c Ontac t s in thE s tuDy

Industry

Environment

Business Services

Not-for-profit

Education

Transportation

Government- Administration

Retail

Financial Services

USPS

Technology

Name

Stephen Wallis

DeborahSliz

JimSiegel

MichaelDevitt

Michael Cox

MarilynSescholtz

Bill Williams

Michael Christie

Cathrine E. Moriarty

DominicDimascia

Company

AIRxpert Systems

Morgan Meguire LLC

HealthCare Chaplaincy

City University of NewYork

Aviacargo Inc.

Departmentof Veterans Affairs

Harry&David

Christie/Coghlin Investment Management

USPS

GSI Commerce

Title

Chairman

President&CEO

Director,Marketing and Communications

DistinguishedProfessor,PhilosophyProgram

President

Psychiatrist

CEO

ManagingPartner

Marketing Specialist

VP,Technology DeliveryServices

thE pOsitiOning statEmEnts

Here is how the vendors described themselves in response to the following question: Provide a statement of no more than 150 words that describes your online B-to-B data product/service, including how you are positioned, meaning your competitive differentiation. In short, this question is, “Who are you, and how are you different?”

This year, we asked only one qualitative question, asking the vendors to explain their competitive positioning in the marketplace.

Demandbaseofferstheonlyonlinedatabaseofbusinesscontactinformationthatintegratesthehighestqualitydatafromtheindustry’stopsources(Jigsaw,InfoUSA,D&B,Harte-Hanks,LexisNexis,Hoovers,anddozensofothers).More than 8 million business contact records with email have been pre-validated and can be searched online at www.demandbase.com using thousands of powerful filter combinations. A simple user interface, pay-as-you-go pricing, automated de-dupe, and closed-loop web monitoring technology to track responseshasmadeDemandbase#1formorethan30,000salesandmarketingprofessionals in just 2 years. Any marketing or sales professional looking for an easier way to target a market or prospect within a sales territory, should try

Participating vendor

Demandbase


3

Participating vendor

Demandbasecon’t D&B® Selectory®

Infogroup

Jigsaw

Demandbase.Itisfreetogetstarted,therearenominimums,andcompletebusinesscontactinformationcanbeaddedtoOutlook,CRM,oranymarketingautomation system. D&B® Selectory® helps sales and marketing professionals find new customers and grow their sales by building targeted lists, profiling existing customers and running direct marketing campaigns from their desktop. Selectory offers its users unlimited searching, viewing and printing of detailed, location-specific companyandcontactinformation.Selectoryprovidesaccessto23millionbusinesses—16millionintheU.S.andCanada,and7millionothersworld-wide. Selectory allows you to: build targeted lists using up to 40 search criteria, download information for campaigns or for importing into CRM applications, no need to deal with a list broker, build a list in minutes, pinpoint the best opportunities in your target market, lookup company and contact details before making the call, add tags or notes, and keep all your sales data in a single place. Infogroup is the leading provider of data driven and interactive resources for targeted sales, marketing and research solutions. Sales and marketing professionals know they can rely on Infogroup’s flexible suite of solutions to add insight to every stage of the sales and marketing process and to achieve results.

Infogroup offers comprehensive information through multiple solutions including:

1)idExec,foronlineaccessto2millionexecutivedecision-makersat900,000public,private,non-profit,andgovernmentorganizationsin172countries.

2)OneSource®,arecognizedleaderinglobalbusinessinformationservices,delivering unparalleled company, executive and industry intelligence and content from over 2500 information sources.

3)OursignatureUSBusinessDatabaseof14millionUSbusinesses.TheUSBusinessDatabaseisphoneverifiedandisnotaderivativeofanotherproductorapplication.Asaresult,thecoverageoftheInfogroupUSBusinessDatabaseisintended to represent all active business sites.

Jigsawisthefastestgrowingdataproviderintheworld,andtheindustryleader inDataasaService(DaaS)andbusinessinformation.Jigsawuniquelyleveragesuser-generated content contributed by its global business-to-business community of one million members, as well as world class data hygiene and validation technologies.JigsawistheonlycompanyintheIndustrytouse“NativeApp”sharingwhereusersofCRMsystemssharedatawithJigsawandextendthereachoftheJigsawcommunity.Jigsawgivesindividualsandcompaniesaccess to contact information for millions of business professionals and profiles on millions of companies. In addition to delivering low-cost and easy access to high valuebusinessinformation,Jigsawprovidescompanieswithcloudbaseddataacquisitionandmanagementservices.JigsawhaswontheCODiEawardforBestBusinessProductivitySolution,aCRMRisingStaraward,andsalesforce.com customer’s choice award for Best Sales Intelligence Tool of 2009.


4

NetProspex NetProspexisraisingthestandardsoftheonlinecontactinformationindustry by being the most accurate resource for business contact information. Business contacts are crowd-sourced from a community of users, and verified by proprietary technology before being published. Continual data scrubbing ensuresmaximumquality.Withover9millionverifiedcontacts,NetProspexprovides accurate contact information on difficult-to-find decision makers acrossNorthAmerica.

1. It’sgrowing—newrecordsaddedeachday.

2. It’s verified — scrubbed by powerful proprietary CleneStep™ technology andbackedbya100%hardbouncereplacementguaranteewithin30days.

3. It’scrowd-sourced,providingadeepreachintohard-to-findmid-management decision makers.

4. It’s integrated, designed to fuel companies large and small, available on the AppExchange, and perfect for fueling marketing automation and sales pipeline fulfillment.

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18

OBsErvatiOns aBOut thE Data

Weknewgoingintothe2010studythatmuchconsolidation had taken place in the B-to-B data industry. So it came as no surprise that fewer firms participated in our study this year—five, down from ten. Last year, several divisions of bothInfogroupandD&Bparticipated.But this year, both of these firms chose to represent themselveswithsinglereports.Onefirmfromlast year dropped out because it had divested itsbusinesslistsdivision.Othercompanies, like zoomInfo, declined to take the time to participate due to the press of business.

Overall,theresultsbringustothesame conclusion as last year: The business data available from vendors tends to be relatively accurate, but coverage is extremely spotty.

To be fair, this year we went further afield in selecting the ten businesspeople whose individual records would be requested from the vendors. We included such people as a psychiatrist from the VA, a marketing director at a non-profit, and a Washington lobbyist. All of these people are active buyers of business products and services, and thus of great interest to business marketers. But in many cases, the vendors had no records on them.

Another interesting angle in the data is the wide variance between vendors who build their files from the business level and those whobuildfromthecontactlevel.Jigsawis an example of the latter, having begun as a business-card swap site. As such, compared to traditional compilers like Infogroup and D&B,Jigsawhasmanycontactspercompany,but relatively fewer companies per industry.

Like last year, individuals with more senior titles tended to attract better coverage. Also like last year, we noticed that we could ask the same question of multiple vendors and get some very different answers, due to differences in interpretation and definition.

With regard to how the reported data has changed year on year, we can make a few observations:

• Inexplicably,somevendorsreportedvastly lower company counts in the same SICs in 2010versus2009.

• Ontheindividualrecords,weassumedthat vendors would provide us with direct phone numbers, but many provided only the general company number.

aDvicE tO BusinEss markEtErs OrDEring cOmpilED Data OnlinE

Ouradvicetomarketersbasedonthisyear’sdata has changed little from last year. We urge caution when ordering data from compliers. Marketers should develop a detailed ordering methodology, to increase the likelihood that the data they receive is what they were seeking.

Ourguidelines:

• giventhewidevariancesindataquantity and quality, it’s essential that you investigate thoroughly the data sources and maintenance practices of the vendors you are considering.

• Specifyexactlywhatyoumeanwhenordering data. Also drill down in detail to understand what the vendor means. In this year’s research, D&BSelectoryandJigsawwereworkingfrom adifferentdefinitionoftheterm“complete” thanours.Notthateitherisrightorwrong— but this can add to the confusion experienced by data buyers. As another example, when asking for phone number, be clear about whether you want the general switchboard or the contact’s direct dial.

• Beveryspecificaboutindustryselections. Find out if the vendor uses SIC, or some kind ofconversionalgorithm.Youwantto know exactly what you are getting.

• Keepaneyeoutforvendorspecialization by industry. As we saw in this year’s study, some individuals in some categories were not included in these large databases. So it’s

essential for market coverage that you explore industry specialty files for both prospecting and data append purposes.

• Considerwhetheryouwantbreadthof contacts or breadth of companies—or both. Datasourcewillalwaysbeanimportant factor in determining which compiler is right for you in the area of contacts versus companies. To enhance coverage, many marketers find that buying data from multiple vendors is necessary.

• Onlyusereputablevendors.Anumberof unscrupulous firms have entered the market claiming they can get you any business names you want, but their data turns out to be stolen, inaccurate, or otherwise not usable.

• Conductacomparativetestbeforeyoubuy. Here are three approaches you can try:

1. Sendeachpotentialvendoralistof 5000 records from your house file and asking them to add data fields.

Includeafewdozenrecordsonwhich youknowthe“truth,”toassess accuracy of what comes back.

2. Orderasampleofnamesfroma prospective vendor as per above, and then verify the accuracy of sample records by telephone.

3. giveeachprospectivevendorasetof instructions using very narrow criteria likeacertainemployeesizerangeand sales volume range in a certain state. Ask the vendors to sort the records in ZIPsequence,andgiveyouthefirst 1000recordstolookat.Ahigh incidence of identical records among the vendors will be a strong indicator of likely accuracy.

We hope our research is useful to business marketers who are renting or buying data online. This information will serve as a guide as you conduct your due diligence.


19

This publication is part of a series entitled Business-to-Business Database Marketing, byBernicegrossmanandRuthP.Stevens.Paperspublishedtodateinclude:

“OurDataisaMess!HowtoCleanUpYourMarketingDatabase” (October2005)

“KeepitClean:AddressStandardizationDataMaintenanceforBusinessMarketers” (February2006)

“OutsourcingYourMarketingDatabase:A‘RequestforInformation’istheFirstStep” (March2006)

“EnhancingYourB-to-BDatabasewithDataAppend” (November2006)

“15ThornyDataProblemThatVexB-to-BMarketers,andHowtoSolveThem” (November2006)

“WhatB-to-BMarketersareREALLYDoingwithTheirDatabases” (September2007)

“OnlineSourcesofB-to-BData:AComparativeAnalysis” (January2009)

These papers are available for download at www.dmrsgroup.com and www.ruthstevens.com

BErnicE grOs sm a n ispresidentofDMRSgroup,Inc.,amarketing databaseconsultancyinNewYorkCity.SheispastchairoftheB-to-BCouncilofTheDMA.Reachheratbgrossman@dmrsgroup.com

ruth p. s tE v Ens consultsoncustomeracquisition&retention,andteaches marketing to graduate students at Columbia Business School. She is the author of The DMA Lead Generation Handbook, and her new book is Trade Show and Event Marketing. Reach her at [email protected]

online sources of b-to-b data: a comparative analysis - 2010 edition

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