Buying addresses for B2B sales: how to do it legally

Blog · Partner: POLISH YELLOW PAGES® · since 1991

A post from the POLISH YELLOW PAGES® blog (formerly DATABOT.PL), originally published on 10.11.2022. Some information (tools, prices, regulations) may have changed since then.

Buying addresses for B2B sales: how to do it right

Admit it, you’ve thought about buying address lists to boost your B2B sales, right?

No problem — the same probably applies to most companies in the B2B sector. But do you know the advantages of buying addresses and what to look out for when buying B2B address lists? Where we use B2B addresses is quite varied, and companies buy addresses for cold calling, mailings, social selling, and even ads on LinkedIn and social media. 

Online you can find many offers where you can buy address lists for B2B sales. However, not every source is legal and there are often smarter solutions than just buying company addresses — for example digital tools and sales intelligence.  

Now, in our guide, we will give you all the information you need to buy addresses safely and effectively for your B2B business . 

Here’s why it’s worth buying address lists for B2B sales

There are many good reasons for buying addresses. The benefits are obvious: running sales or B2B marketing campaigns is easier and even more personal thanks to bought address lists. These lists give access to information such as the correct company address, the first and last name of the contact/decision-maker, the phone number and email address.

If you want more reasons, we have them. Let’s look now at the 6 most important reasonsfor buying B2B addresses. 

By buying high-quality company addresses you can:

1. Speed up acquiring new customers

Winning new customers is not that easy. In the B2B world it takes a lot of resources to obtain the addresses of potentially interested parties. But by buying B2B addresses, you no longer have to spend hours searching the web for suitable companies, potential contacts and their addresses. You will save yourself an enormous amount of time and energy! Simply convert the research and search effort into your hourly rate. That makes it very easy to determine whether it is worth buying address lists rather than starting a laborious search yourself.

2. Expand your customer base and sales territory

Even if you already have many satisfied existing customers and your sales plan is full to the brim, it is never a bad idea to put out your feelers and track down new data. Who knows what might happen? Maybe you’ll come across companies that weren’t on your radar before? New customers and sales territories can open up new opportunities for you. By buying company addresses (not personal data), you gain a wide selection of potential new customers you would otherwise not have been … aware of.

Remember: you benefit from these advantages only to a limited extent by buying addresses. But by investing in sales intelligence, you can be sure of securing these benefits. Below we explain exactly what sales intelligence means.

3. Get transparent market information

If you don’t just buy a data set (shallow data) but use a database of the whole company (deep data), you can gain deeper insight into the market. You will learn how large the companies you plan to work with are, and what the competition is doing? With comprehensive online tools such as sales intelligence tools, you can answer all these questions in just a few clicks.

4. Target your marketing activities with sales trigger events in DataBot

With extensive data records or, even better – a complete online and offline database, you can conceptualise your marketing campaigns more precisely. Suppose you distribute and sell software using ChatBot from DataBot and receive a list of company addresses that includes companies offering customer service or a helpline. These companies may want to supplement their current offering with your ChatBot, to give their customers an even better experience! That is very targeted. You can also order a trigger event collection service from our consultants. 

So-called sales intelligence tools — the automated version of buying addresses — offer the option of searching for trigger events. This way you can find out before your calls whether there has been a change in management. Such sales trigger events offer an excellent conversation starter and reveal the right moment to approach a new or existing customer.

Minimise wasted reach in campaigns

Wasted reach occurs when, in marketing campaigns for example, you address a target group that doesn’t really match the demographic of your company or of the client you work for. Of course some wasted reach is unavoidable, and your target audience will never fit 100%. That would be too good to be true, right? 

However, if wasted reach is too high, the ratio of resources spent per lead is no longer ideal. Fortunately, you can buy address lists and keep wasted reach low. Buy only the addresses of companies that match your Ideal Customer Profile ( ICP) and reach only target groups that actually fit your offer. 

Define your buyer persona

Today it is impossible to imagine B2B marketing without so-called personas. A buyer persona describes — in contrast to ideal customer profiles — not directly the ideal customer, but the buyer of your product. So before you buy addresses, you should know your ICP and persona – the buyer persona, in order to get effective company addresses. 

With address lists or a sales intelligence tool that offers many filtering methods, you can define your buyer persona more specifically. Who is your offer most attractive to? Which department takes part in the purchasing decision? Sales intelligence tools in particular can help define the buyer persona as precisely as possible — but also the ICP . 

Source: www.thebpowermba.com 

Where can I buy the right addresses for B2B sales?

In general, there are many different ways to buy B2B addresses — but not every one is ideal. We’ll show you the most popular providers and our recommendations.

The classic method: buying addresses from a list broker

The classic way of buying company addresses is through a list broker. You choose your industry, and often also a location, and receive a directory of company addresses. Depending on the provider and the cost, the information you receive is more or less extensive. In most cases you get the company name, address or a contact person at the company for your money. Even if such packages seem worth their price, they can bring more disadvantagesthan you might think. For example, the data may be out of date, not particularly comprehensive or simply wrong.  

But don’t worry! There are other, more reliable offline and smart solutions. Modern B2B sales departments and smart B2B marketing departments prefer to rely on database producers and on software and artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain detailed, up-to-date and complete company addresses.

Smarter: sales intelligence from DataBot provides the right B2B addresses

Sales intelligence is the concept of the moment when it comes to high-quality company addresses. The term refers to digital data, tools or software that help you find and reach prospects.

Sales intelligence tools, i.e. SI tools – sales intelligence, collect and analyse various business data from the internet and make it available in compact form. As a rule, such software is based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, so it not only prepares all the information for you in clear profiles but also adds trigger events to the address – such as expansion abroad. Even outdated data no longer plays a role, because crawling technologies automatically ensure up-to-date information is available. 

As mentioned earlier, these tools can save a lot of work in the long run. The cherry on top: you get B2B data you would normally not come across, or would have to spend countless hours searching for. DataBot’s SI tools can also help you create a buyer persona with their extensive data — classic address packages simply can’t come close to such data.

Another plus is that each of these technologies can be integrated with existing CRMsystems. This way you can design your work more cleverly and don’t have to jump between tools.

Our recommendation: DataBot

The sales intelligence platform of DataBot goes further than just buying addresses. You get a smart B2B database with more than 50 million contacts and more than 20 million companies from all over Europe. This means that in addition to an extensive company search, you can also access other smart features such as B2B lookalikes, trigger events or lead alerts. You can “clone” your best customers and never again miss the right moment for an approach or a prospect. 

What to consider when buying address lists

If you want to buy company addresses, you should always look closely at the various providers. Not every provider has a good reputation, and when an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Here are some things to bear in mind when buying addresses in B2B sales

Buy only current addresses. What use is buying addresses that are no longer up to date? B2B addresses from a few months ago will be of little use to you, because you never know whether the company still exists or whether the contact person is still correct. Cheap address lists are usually inaccurate.

Buy GDPR-compliant data

It is often assumed that the new RODO applies only to the B2C sector. But as soon as you process personal data, the regulation of course also applies in B2B. One criterion that can give you security with regard to the RODO, is:

Make sure that the B2B data, i.e. the addresses you buy, are also publicly available. For example, some providers supply mobile phone numbers for direct contacts — even if this is very tempting, caution is advised, especially with such “personal” data. If you don’t know exactly how the provider obtained this data, or if you don’t have the data subject’s consent, storing this data is already unlawful.

Buy complete address lists

What types of data are relevant to you? Check in advance whether the provider can supply them. What use is a company name and address when your sales department usually wins new customers by email or social media? You would be missing the most important information. If you want to contact a company you don’t yet know, it is important to know who the contact person is or how big the company is. The more information you have, the better you can decide whether the company suits you and your services. 

Look for flexibility in filters and lists

When buying address lists, we are talking about static B2B data. On the other hand, if you use software, it is “dynamic” data. What does that mean? Static data remains unchanged even if the contact person changes or the company changes in the meantime. You receive a data set once, which inevitably becomes outdated and useless over time. The advantage of flexible or dynamic B2B data , which you get through sales intelligence, is that it is constantly adjusted and updated. New information is added automatically and can be used in line with your marketing and sales strategy. That gives you complete flexibility!

There are many other ways to find the right target company than just using the parameters of company size, sector or postcode. Of course these filters help weed out some unsuitable companies. But there are even more precise settings! With sales intelligence tools such as DataBot you can search for companies with specific keywords on their website that are highly relevant to you and your industry. This way you find exactly the companies that mention that keyword and can win them over with individual, targeted advertising. 

Is buying addresses expensive?

There is no “yes or no” answer to this question. If you look around online, you will notice that there is sometimes a huge difference in price when it comes to “buying company addresses”.

As mentioned earlier, cheap is not always the best option, because these offers often contain outdated and incorrect B2B addresses. Otherwise, the price depends on your requirements. Specifically, this means: The more information about a company you want, the more expensive buying company addresses will be.

You are probably now asking yourself how much information you might actually need. The opposite question: what information is needed to make contact with a company? If you only get the address and company name, you can only contact the company in a very impersonal way. Companies often receive such messages, so your chances of getting a reply are rather small. 

So if you are clear about the exact information you need, you also know what information the address broker should provide. Of course, more information costs more money. Here you have to weigh up for yourself how much you want to invest in buying company addresses. 

Is buying address lists legal?

Although buying B2B address lists is legal, you must make sure they are exclusively B2B addresses and do not contain personal data. Otherwise you will very easily come into conflict with the RODO. Although the RODO also applies to companies, there are some exceptions: The GDPR is divided into recitals and articles. This means that if it is not clear whether an article also applies to you, or whether there are certain exceptions, the recitals apply.

The decisive factor for buying B2B addresses is recital 14, under which all legal persons (i.e. companies such as a Sp. z o.o. or S.A. in Poland, or a GmbH or AG in Germany) are excluded from protection. This means you can buy company addresses completely legally. However, we advise against sending mass emails. The risk of receiving a warning letter here is very high. 

Is it also possible to buy only email addresses for B2B sales?

The idea of buying only email addresses seems quite logical at first glance: most contacts in the B2B sector now take place exclusively by email. So why do I need other information? However, as you have already read above, more information always comes in handy when buying addresses. You should at least know the company name and the contact person so you can respond quickly if they reply. Otherwise, having email addresses alone is of little use to you. This way you can reach the decision-maker at the ideal moment and address them directly with an individual message. 

Tip from DataBot : note that emails with advertising content without the recipient’s express consent are prohibited under § 7(2)(3) of the German UWG. In practice a double opt-in procedure is used to obtain consent.

If you buy only email addresses, you are taking a risk. Sending the same message to a large number of such email addresses can easily look like spam — and you may receive a warning. Not to mention that the success rate with this method is very low. Another risk is the purchase of the addresses itself: providers who sell only email addresses often operate on the edge of legality, because their data is used for mass mailings. So if you see such an offer, it is better not to use it.

Tip from DataBot : how about another postal advertising campaign? If you send post to a company address, you not only comply with the GDPR but will probably also be remembered. Because honestly, who still sends letters?

Conclusion: buying addresses was yesterday. Today people stream B2B data!

Buying company addresses is a simple but rather outdated way of expanding your database. It is much more modern, elegant and comprehensive to use sales intelligence tools such as DataBot — here you stream up-to-date and high-quality B2B data exactly when you need it and in uncompromising quality. 

This eliminates the need to buy a fixed set of B2B addresses, which are static, inflexible and error-prone. With modern software solutions such as DataBot, you also get other useful features such as sales trigger events, B2B lookalikes and lead alerts. This way you can personalise your acquisition perfectly!  

In addition, this solution includes many other tools that make your marketing particularly smart. You can filter companies by specific criteria, be informed about an upcoming change in management and more.  

Are you still buying addresses? Or have you already started streaming?

Tags: address lists, B2B data, B2B sales, buying addresses, Sales Intelligence, B2B data, B2B lookalikes

Mariusz Biniak – creator of the POLISH YELLOW PAGES® brand (formerly DATABOT.PL) and author of a blog on B2B sales. Disclosure: the author is connected with the publisher of THE BUSINESS TIME.

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Source

• POLISH YELLOW PAGES® (databot.pl) – original blog post

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