When you’re thinking of buying a mailing list, the first criterion is usually type of company – legal firms, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers, retailers. Then you might think geography – UK wide or local? And then obviously you want to target a decision-maker so you may choose managing director/someone senior.
But you can really target your list (and therefore pay less for it by buying less data) by considering the most likely job title your target will have.
If you email the managing director, you assume that he will pass your information down to the relevant person in the company. While this is a reasonable view when targeting companies of say, under 50 people, for larger firms (and it is larger firms who have the largest budgets) you need a more targeted approach.
If you are currently dealing with smaller companies where the managing director buys your product and you wish to tap into the more generous budgets of larger companies, discuss with your team which departments in a company usually use your product and contact the managers of those departments directly.
If your typical buyers span two departments you may need to send two e-shots ie marketing software can be bought by the marketing director and the IT director working together, so email the heads of both departments.
The most senior decision maker for a function does not always have a 'director' job title. For example, many firms don't have an IT guy sitting on the board; they have a Head of IT who reports in to the finance director. You can ask a mailing list company to select IT directors and where there is no IT director, then select an IT manager contact.
A word of warning on job titles; some mailing list providers offer 'the name of the person responsible for' marketing, HR, IT, training, facilities etc. This is not always a manager with a budget and in a small company, you might buy the email address of the director's PA or an office manager.
If you are buying a mailing list of medium to large-sized companies and are looking for a list of say, marketing managers, be sure to check that their job titles are just that. Ask the mailing list company for a sample of the data and a preview file of the companies and job titles you are buying. If a company does not have a marketing function, it is often a clear signal that they do not run ongoing marketing campaigns. You are likely to be wasting budget chasing after a company that does not engage in marketing if you are offering marketing services.
On the other hand even large companies simply will not have the specialist job title you are looking for. Fleet managers, sponsorship managers, market research manager, travel managers, diversity managers, sustainability managers, IT security - these are all functions that may have a dedicated person or may fall into someone else's remit. Again, ask the mailing list company to select, say diversity managers and where there is no one with that job title, select HR director or HR manager.
You can see a full list of the 121 mailing lists of job titles offered by Electric Marketing here