How to Create a Focused House List

Over the last few years, I have developed a technique for building excellent prospecting lists without spending a nickel with list brokers, or using up unjustifiable amounts of time.

These lists are almost laser-precise in terms of the depth and breadth of personal information about each prospect they contain. With them I can send out letters, make phone calls or deploy email campaigns that, I'm told time and again by recipients made them absolutely convinced that the outreach was a one-off, sent just to them.

Here, in this three-article series, I detail the specific steps and technologies I use. Every company needs to adapt this technique uniquely, and many have more sophisticated technologies to do what I describe here. But the general approach—and often the specific techniques—has broad applicability.

Today, in general, people use two approaches to list-building. Here's why neither is very effective:

Purchased lists. Purchased lists are expensive (once you load up on selectors). They're also too generic: You really know very little about the individual beyond name and title, and the company beyond name and, perhaps, industry category.
Opt-in lists. Opt-in lists are even worse: Since anyone can opt in, there's no guarantee at all that those on the list have any influence or authority when it comes to purchasing products and services.

These approaches aren't useful, but they are certainly easy. The marketer does nothing but write checks and check lists.

Instead, what follows is my personal methodology for reaching and engaging first-cabin prospects—this approach is more laborious, it requires research, it sometimes hits a dead end. But it works for me, and for my clients. And by "works" I mean it delivers results, based on the number of closed deals.

As an example, I recently sent out an email to CEOs of technology companies. I sent out just 142 emails (about the same amount as many companies' top-prospects list). I received 15 positive responses broken down as follows:

Seven acknowledged receipt (two thanked me) but indicated they were not ready, yet asked that I keep in contact.
Three set a general timeframe for us to talk—two, three and five months ahead.
Three set up a teleconference.
Two are now clients.

That's a 10.5% raw response. The percentage improves when you factor in 25 messages that bounced back and the unknown factor of those intercepted by spam filters, despite my efforts.

Let me also emphasize at the start that we are not talking about spam here—as you'll see, no spammer could or would ever do this. I'm a businessperson, looking to conduct business with other businesspeople. I have a professional message to deliver and real value to offer the recipient—business people are always open to improving their business. They may not be interested in my services or my clients' products or services, and I respect that—but I'm unashamed about reaching out to them.

What's Ahead

Here is a summary of the content I'll cover:

In this first installment, I'll share the general concept behind the approach, and introduce you to the tools and techniques I use.
In the second installment, I'll show you how to create a database of nearly 2,000 prospects from an online directory in under 20 minutes.
In the third installment, I'll show you how to refine that list, add continually more granular and targeted information to it and then craft an email campaign that reflects the recipient to such a degree that each prospect will think the message he or she received is the only one you wrote.

How to Find Quality Source Lists

I don't buy prospect lists, I create my own. As with most companies who sell non-commoditized products via a direct channel, my sales effort is not a numbers game, it is a consultative process. I need to understand the customer's specific situation before I can even begin to attract interest in doing business with me. A shotgun approach against a purchased or opt-in list just won't do it.

My lists are always captured from Web sites. In the example above, I used Deloitte Touche's Fast 500 as my source. Other sources include directories like Yahoo, conference attendee lists, association membership lists and more. Finding such lists is easy—I'm sure you all know where the company names, URLs, and general and even specific contact information about attractive prospects for your business can be found.

How to Convert and Complete that List

These lists are hardly ready to use as is. They are incomplete in terms of the information I need. They often span multiple pages (for instance, a general query page, followed by a listing of companies, each of which links to an information page on that company). So they have to be consolidated into a single, relevant, manageable form.

I do this with a combination of Acrobat's Web page capture function and Save As RTF facilities, and Word wildcard search and replace (sometimes macro recording for repetitive processing). I turn it into a table with this general schema: COMPANY, URL, SALUTATION, FIRST, LAST, EMAIL, DESCRIPTION. Where the information is available, I add in more detailed information, such as revenue, number of employees and so on.

Those lists may already contain the targeted executive's name (not usually, though) but rarely the email address.

The second installment of this series of articles will detail the following:

How to use Acrobat's Web page capture to accomplish this specific task.
How to use Word wildcard search and replace (and macro recording) to eliminate all the extraneous information and create the core data elements of the database I will create.
How to set up the general database so that the process of completion is as quick and efficient as possible.

Finding the email address is more difficult. On occasion, it's at the Web site, but usually not. So I learn the corporate email convention. The path of least resistance is the press center: a good press release contains individual press contact information. In the absence of this, I run a Google query. Only about 1% of the addresses are not found, although I don't always succeed in reaching the individual—those are the bouncebacks.

I then create a contextually relevant phrase for my DESCRIPTION field from Web site information. It might be a description of the company, an outline of the business model, statistical data—whatever makes sense.

Once I complete the table in Word, I import the end result into a simple database that is compatible with my email delivery tool.

The third installment of this series of articles will detail the following:

How to track down email addresses, including the search syntax that works best (learned through much trial and error).
How to capture the correct description of the company's business.
How to import the completed Word table into any database that imports CSV files.

How to Structure the Email for Greatest Impact

Now I have a good list, and enough information in that list to create focused, and very relevant, outreach letters. The objectives of the letter are simple: Attract attention, allay suspicion, establish credibility, present value and request a reply. I keep the emails under 450 words—I've learned that very short emails smell fishy to serious business people and very long ones put them to sleep. (This is little more than basic Ogilvy, who always championed fairly long direct mail letters.)

There is a specific flow to it—a certain "drama," if you will—that compels the reader through each phase of the message.

How I craft that message will be described in the third installment of this series as well.

My broadcasting tool of choice is Gammadyne Mailer—it's about $150 from a small shop in Texas. Warning: It is not an easy tool to learn—it's too technical and non-Windows-standard for its marketplace (I've begged the owner to let me help turn it into a monster product but he demurs). But once you nail its functionality, it's extremely powerful and flexible. There are, of course, many other products that do the same.

You may work at a company with resources or talent that provide a better way to do some of this—many of my clients already have email merge and broadcasting systems that are perfect for the job. That's good. But creating highly relevant messages, structured in such a way as to ensure the best possibility acceptance on the part of the audience, is critical—and something that no technology can do for you. I win not because of technology, but because of technique.

Is it sometimes a pain in the butt? You bet. Does it work. You bet. Is it worth it?

You bet it is.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Fischler is founder and principal coach and consultant of Markitek (markitek.com), which for over a decade has provided marketing consulting and coaching services to companies around the world, from startups and SMEs to giants like Kodak and Pirelli. You can contact him by clicking here.

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