Mailing Lists

If you buy business mailing lists and email lists, you can be forgiven for thinking that you can no longer use them since the arrival of GDPR on 25th May 2018, when the new General Data Protection Regulation came into force. Much has been written decrying this Data Protection Regulation update as the end of cold email marketing. And it does herald some big changes, most notably the tightening up of how people consent to their personal data being used. But this does not rule out cold b2b email marketing or using bought-in business mailing lists to generate sales. Since 25th May, for consent to

Now that you've written those GDPR policy documents and tackled your corporate mountain of old data, you might be ready to leave the legal stuff to the lawyers and get back to marketing, comms and sales. But maybe you've read something about PECR and some people on LinkedIn are still insisting that b2b email marketing will be over in May 2018? What Is PECR? PECR is the Privacy & Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 which governs email marketing. As an EU Directive, the UK can choose how to interpret PECR. Crucially the UK allows businesses the freedom to email other

The new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) rules that if your mailing list is opt-in, consent to opt-in to receive marketing communications must be be "freely-given, specific, informed and unambiguous". It is no longer permitted to use mailing lists on the basis of the old opt-in wheeze of a series of double negatives to leave a box unticked agreeing to be contacted by "the company's marketing partners". The ICO's (Information Commissioners Office) guidance on interpreting GDPR specifically rules out pre-ticked boxes and states that any third party using a mailing list must be named

List focuses on client companies with dedicated events budgets Google "events managers" and get the names of thousands of people working in events. If you are selling to events managers, it looks as if you have a wide target market and hitting your sales figures will be stress-free. But start contacting those events managers and find that it is one of those job titles that carries different responsibilities depending on the industry sector. Large hotels have events managers but they focus on selling the hotel as a venue to wedding organisers and training companies. Travel companies have events

There has been a fair bit of low-level grumbling about the Apprenticeship Levy from the big beasts of UK plc. Payable by any company with an annual wages bill of £3m+, the Apprenticeship Levy has joined Brexit as the go to excuse for a CEO offering a sticky profits warning to shareholders. But many companies have embraced the the change; they are not just taking on apprentices, they have developed formal apprenticeship programmes and had their in-house programmes accredited as apprenticeship training providers. These companies running in-house schemes feature on our new lists of Apprenticeship

When should you choose to select your list by both employee size and annual turnover? Generally our advice is not to do this. Pick just one. Choose employee size if you are selling something relevant for companies whose business relies on having a lot of staff eg, payroll software, health and safety services, absentee management software, internal communications consulting, catering kit for staff restaurants. Choose turnover for everything else. If you really must. Let's say you are buying a list of HR managers, it is largely irrelevant to specify that each company must have 15+ employees

So you've bought your mailing list, removed the people you already have as clients, checked your creative for typos and spelling errors and sent the email out. Apart from dealing with all your enquiries, setting your appointments and processing your orders, what should you do next? It probably isn't your favourite job but remember to keep a record of your results. How many orders did the mailing generate, how many appointments, enquiries, phone calls? Listen to your prospects when you speak to them. Did they understand the mailing and did they know how to respond? Were they the right people to

Electric Marketing mailing lists are targeted, compiled mailing lists of 60,000 corporate influencers and budget holders. If you're included in our mailing lists and you don't want to be, we'll remove you within hours. We won't be pleased about it. We've selected you as a business person with senior responsibilities that other companies want to reach. And we only allow verified companies offering products and services pertinent to your role to access our data. But we will swiftly remove you from the mailing list. We often get messages requesting removal from people who are not on our mailing

No one likes to waste money paying for the same thing twice. But if you already have data, how can you add to it without paying for the same contacts again? Appending is a useful service which mailing list companies offer. It has its limitations but it can save time and budget and it allows you to quickly refresh the data you already have, without spending budget needlessly. But, it is not something that you can do in your office on your PC. You have to trust your mailing list supplier with your data and allow the data company full access to it. Mailing list companies are happy to sign Non

How should you define the largest companies in the UK? By annual sales? By numbers of staff? Or do you go by the London Stock Exchange definition and buy a mailing list of the FTSE 100? How you define your top 100 companies should depend on who you are contacting within the company and the product you are marketing. If you are targeting marketing directors, finance directors and CEOs, choose a list of the companies with the highest annual sales; generally speaking, the higher the turnover, the larger the purchasing budget. But if you are selling to the HR, training, facilities or IT