If you’ve been cold email prospecting for a long time, You’ll eventually ask yourself questions like, is it worth purchasing B2B data? The answer is yes, but knowing where to purchase an email list that can actually benefit your business goals is the catch.

There are a lot of reputable data providers that will sell you a purchased list of industry-related contacts. The key to maximizing your return on investment is to make sure that you purchase contacts related to your industry.

Receiving emails with no relevancy is one of the top reasons why an email recipient may unsubscribe – so don’t ruin the value of a purchased list by sending to a cheap, random list of cold contacts. In an example shared by DMDatabases, one defrauded marketer explains how a list of 85K golf-industry contacts purchased for $699 got him locked out of his email account for sending a test email due to poor deliverability.

Video – When does it make sense to buy an email list (Gary Vaynerchuk)

What’s the Risk?

The concept of reaching new prospects with business email lists may sound too good to be true, and often times, it is. To send cold emails to business-to-business contacts, you need to make sure that your database is clean and up-to-date. It’s also important to use an email service designed for outbound email marketing – or you could damage your sender reputation and get your IP address blacklisted.

The problem is, marketers try to use purchased data with their existing opt-in database. This will damage the overall deliverability of your email marketing campaigns. When it comes to cold email marketing, keep your cold and opted-in lists separate. It’s your job to persuade cold contacts to opt-in to your marketing automation list.

Do yourself (and your email marketing service) a favor and purchase a targeted list of cold B2B contacts that have been professionally vetted to align with your business and services. Not only will you understand how to communicate with your buyer, but you’ll get fewer complaints and achieve better open rates.

This can be a powerful way to supplement your current database, and learn more about the key players in your industry. (See what others are saying on Quora).

Where to Purchase an Email List

Email scraping tools generate low-quality email addresses that will do more harm to your email marketing efforts than good. The majority of the emails on a list like this will be blocked or sent to the SPAM folder. The bounces alone will destroy your sender reputation and ruin you deliverability rate to the rest of the list.

If you’re aware of the benefits of list segmentation and lead nurturing, you’ll also know that these strategies are only effective if you speaking to the right person. This means the decision makers at the company. The bottom line is, focus on professionally vetted lists of the types of contacts worth getting in front of.

Accurate Data is Everything

Data providers possess a deep knowledge of various industries and can help you focus on the highest value opportunities. They often offer a guarantee of the contact record accuracy and deliverability as well.

Accurate data is the only way to properly maximize ROI of a purchased list. That’s the difference between a reputable data provider and a cheap email list.

What is a B2B data provider? A perfect example is ZoomInfo.

They offer the most comprehensive B2B contact database in the world. You’ll be able to find the prospects you are looking for based on industry, location, company size and much more. Buying an email list from ZoomInfo isn’t cheap, but their database has earned the trust of some huge companies.

We’ve put together the ultimate list of B2B data providers for you – so you can purchase the absolute best email list for cold prospecting.

The Ultimate List of B2B Data Providers

All of these data providers offer cold contacts in the USA and are in no particular order.

• Database USA
• Dataman Group
• ZoomInfo
• Cloudlead
• InfoUSA
• AeroLeads
• Prospect Cloud
• Special Databases
• PinPoint Technologies
• K-12 Data
• DMDatabases
• Lead411
• MaxPro Data
• Exchange Leads
• RedBase Interactive
• Lake Group Media
• APC Email Lists
• MegaLeads
• UpLead
• Brightspeed

Maximizing Purchased Contact Data

Despite what countless articles on the internet will tell you, purchased contact lists have their place in the B2B sales and marketing world. They can reveal insightful information about your industry to help you make smarter decisions and optimize your marketing budget. However, to avoid potential problems down the road, don’t import the emails into your existing opt-in list.

(Consider using an email lead generation software to convert cold contacts to opt-in)

A little research into the company trends on your purchased list will uncover useful prospecting data. You can use the data for better lead targeting by identifying influencers and key contacts in a targeted industry. You’ll discover many new companies that were previously under your radar. The data you observe on your purchased list

To reach business customers through cold email, the data must be accurate and verified. Purchasing email lists can be a fantastic way to scale your lead generation efforts if your email marketing platform knows how to handle the data.

Consider reading our post about the importance of email deliverability, and choosing the right list cleaning service to verify your contact data. On top of all of that, the value of clean data can be lost if not marketed to effectively.

Did we miss a great B2b data provider that should be on this list? Let us know in the comments.

Related Post:

The Truth About Purchased Email Lists

Cold Email Open Rates vs. Opted In (Clickback)

7 Tricks to Writing an Effective Cold Email (Entrepreneur)