In today’s push for personalization, B2Bs simply can’t afford bad data on B2B leads.
Sadly, there’s a good chance that almost half of the data in your system is incorrect.
In the consumer sector, marketers can assume that the parent of an infant will be the parent of a toddler in a few years. Someone who buys professional-grade fishing equipment will still be interested in fishing for the near future – short of some freak turn of events.
B2B data is a totally different monster. Companies, phone numbers, needs, and jobs change daily.
You can’t stop change but you can prevent bad data from entering your system in the first place and keep it clean with verification. Here’s how.
No Lead Verification Services = Death Sentence for Personalization
The future doesn’t look bright unless companies make some major overhauls to their data collection and storage.
Research estimates that 80% of companies will abandon their personalization strategies within the next five years due to poor ROI results.
That’s bad news because 85% of buyers say they’ll dismiss a company that doesn’t personalize the very first interaction. B2Bs expect the same personalized experience from businesses that they’ve come to expect from consumer brands like Netflix and Spotify.
What’s the problem? Why can’t B2Bs get personalization right?
Data. They’re not working with accurate data and it’s destroying their personalization strategies.
Bad Data Is Costly but Lead Verification Services Can Help
B2B data ages like milk. You can’t afford to clean up your email list once every year and expect your strategies to deliver results.
62% of companies use data that’s up to 40% incorrect to dictate their marketing decisions. In fact, up to 25% of business databases suffer from critical errors.
Every year, it’s safe to assume that over a third of your data rots and screws up your marketing strategies. Why?
- 30% of people switch jobs
- 34% of company names change
- 43% of phone numbers change
- 34% of job titles change
- 37% of email addresses go bad
Bad data is expensive, too.
When someone provides a fake email address, job title, or name, it only costs $1 to scrub the error before it enters your system. However, that cost increases ten-fold when it makes its way into the database and $100 if you do nothing and let it sit there to throw off your business decisions.
Reflecting on these numbers, it’s easy to see why major US companies like Ford and GE lost $900 billion on failed digital transformation efforts in 2018.
Getting Your B2B Lead Form Right
No forms are the best forms. Instead of bombarding your interested visitors with intrusive questions, try letting them browse and self-nurture at their own pace.
You don’t have to give away all your eBooks and lead magnets for free. Instead, give everyone a free sample of every piece of content and let them choose to supply their email address when they want to read the whole thing.
Plus, this strategy also helps you collect valuable information on your leads about which topics they like and the stage of the buying cycle they’re at.
Beyond going formless, take these steps to optimize your forms.
- Only include 100% necessary fields: A business email and country are all you need.
- Avoid ghost buttons: Make your CTA button a contrasting color.
- Use a single-column layout: Not side-by-side fields.
- Make things optional: If you must ask for more than an email (like company name), make it optional.
Protect Your Lead Forms from Spam
After making forms friendly enough for your visitors, you also need to protect them from spam. Here are a few tips.
Use a Captcha
A captcha uses those strange sequences of numbers, letters, or even photos to prevent bots from filling out your forms. You can also employ honey pots and math equations.
Employ Double Opt-In
Double opt-ins aren’t only good for preventing bots, they’re also important for self-verifying email addresses and following international spam regulations.
How Do Lead Verification Services Work?
Lead verification services prevent bad data from entering your system.
We regret to inform you that no, Bezos@Amazon.com didn’t sign up for your list to download that eBook.
A lead verification system makes sure that you’re only collecting information from valid business email addresses – no Gmails or Hotmails. Not only that, but verification also makes sure you’re not collecting task-based emails like info@ or contact@.
However, lead verification services go beyond simply filtering out fake emails and non-business leads.
What’s the worst part about forms (besides being a form, obviously)?
Filling out unnecessary information.
Who wants to give a random company their company name, size, job role, and phone number just to access an industry report? They know you’re only asking for it so you can send them follow up texts and emails.
With so much clutter in our inboxes, it’s no wonder people run when they see a form.
Lead verification services remove all those intrusive questions. By collecting nothing more than a business email, an algorithm looks at public information on LinkedIn and other databases to put together a broad profile for every lead:
Source: Hushly
Plus, since the algorithm grabs this information from LinkedIn and public sources, it can also update the data as things change. In other words, data is 100% accurate 100% of the time.
Use Lead Verification Services to Optimize Your Real-Time Personalization
Hushly’s AI engine uses human lead verification to avoid bad data from ever entering your system.
We support going formless from the get-go. By letting your leads browse freely with ungated content, they can self-nurture at their own pace. Plus, you can avoid fake leads from entering your system just to access your content.
Hushly’s human lead verification cross references lead email addresses and country with information available through LinkedIn. Not only do we verify that the information is correct, but we also close gaps and bulk up resources.
Hushly’s platform can help you generate 51% more lead conversions through the power of personalization and AI. Read the eBook to learn more about ditching forms.