What to Consider When Aggregating Marketing Data

The goal for any marketer is to focus on efficient and effective marketing campaigns that produce results. For outbound marketers, that means aggregating data well to get those results. By stitching together different B2B or B2C contact or company data, marketers can get better leads, create better marketing campaigns, enrich an existing database, and much more.

In the post, we’ll define data aggregation, go over the different types, tell you where you can get your marketing data, and considerations you should take into account before aggregating marketing data.

What is data aggregation?

Data aggregation is the process of combining data from multiple sources and bringing it together into one summarized format.

In B2B and B2C marketing, data aggregation is the practice of obtaining data for a particular purpose, may it be contact, geospatial, or intent data. This data can come from flat files, email lists, programmatic access to other databases via software, and other sources.

Organizations can also aggregate contact or email data organically through website traffic analytics, manual data entry, and form sign-ups, however, this process less efficient when it is needed on a larger scale.

This is the first step for marketing and data professionals that use data as part of their workflows. For data companies, data is aggregated before the compilation process, where programmers will review, segment, and test the data before adding to an existing database.

For marketing and sales teams using B2B and B2C contact data, it will be used almost immediately to help towards sales objectives after being uploading to a CRM, CDP, or other sales and marketing platforms.

About data resellers

An alternative to companies collecting their own data is to look for an external data solution from data resellers.

Companies generate incredibly large volumes of data through their interactions with suppliers, customers, online transactions, internal and external stakeholders, and feedback mechanisms.

Data resellers purchase all this valuable data from numerous sources, aggregate and compile the data, maintain their databases, and then sell that data to marketers or other resellers.

This data can include names, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, age, gender, occupation, income, insurance data, healthcare data, banking data, and much more. It will then be segregated and combined in a way that is relevant to a business, which can save it tons of time and money.

The data from resellers can help a business better understand its consumers and market to improve decisions, processes, enhance performance, and solve problems.

Different types of data aggregation

When aggregating marketing data, you'll primarily deal with two different types. We refer to them as the following:

On-going data aggregation

This is the practice of purchasing or obtaining data for the purpose of adding to an existing database or product. An example of this would be a B2B data vendor looking to enrich or enhance its current B2B contact database, or Google Maps, which is constantly adding data to improve the accuracy of its product. It is with the intent of owning and maintaining the data for the long term.

Single-use data aggregation

This is the practice of purchasing or obtaining data for one-time or multiple-time use to drive a particular goal, such as email marketing or direct email campaign. It is with the intent of using the data for a single-use or multiple-use, limited purpose in the short term with no intention of maintaining the data.

Where to get marketing data

High-quality data is recognized by marketers as an important source for growing a targeted database and the key to campaign success. Buying marketing data is a great method for businesses to boost organic activities and grow. Here are the main sources of marketing data:

Data vendors

Data vendors will provide global business executive data, consumer data, business data, and business website data. You’ll want to look out for poor-quality suppliers with cheap, inaccurate data. Look for reputable data vendors like Every Market Media that create, source, and maintain high-quality data.

Compiled lists

A good list will always be the number one component of a successful email or direct mailing campaign. Which type of list a marketer uses is completely dependent on what it’s being used for. Compiled lists are ideal for mass marketing and those that are on a budget.

List generation tools like EMMquery can give you custom targeted email lists so you can do more instantly and effectively. Compiled lists can be purchased from data brokers, who buy lists from different sources and connect buyers with the data they are looking for.

Online Directories or internet sources

While online directories and internet sources used to be much more popular, they are not completely meaningless today. They can be an affordable way of collecting data, especially if you do not need anything too specific or complex.

What to consider before aggregating data

Proper Segmentation & Data Type

The type of data you are buying should be determined by either your use-case or the use-case of your customers.

Find out what is selling and driving traffic in your market and your competitors. Segmentation allows you to separate customers by different characteristics. For example, you can segment customers that have used a particular product feature in the last month.

By viewing the aggregated metrics that you are interested in, you can compare and contrast segments. This will allow you to test assumptions and give you a better understanding of different accounts.

For single-use data aggregation, ensure it is segmented properly to hit your ideal market. One common issue is that many marketing professionals don’t fully understand their market segment when they’re looking to buy data or email lists. If you’re buying poorly targeted lists, they will not perform well.

Avoid this issue by working with data experts will a high-level of experience segmenting and downloading lists. 

Good quality data

It is important to have data that is comprehensive, accurate, and fresh (updated):

1. Without comprehensive coverage, it is impossible to market to the right segment or create a user experience that people want.
   Many marketing professionals are looking for a holistic view of each contact in their B2B and B2C data, not only an email address. Including direct dial phone numbers, postal addresses, and LinkedIn profiles give outbound professionals an edge.
   
   Work with a data vendor that provides you with all the data attributes you need – and maybe a little more.  
2. Without accurate data, businesses will not be able to effectively serve their own needs, let alone the needs of their customers.
   
   Consider your use-case for the data you are obtaining and whether it will serve you well.
   1. If you are an email marketer, you’ll want deliverable and current email addresses that won't bounce or risk getting your organization blacklisted. Some data vendors (like Every Market Media - wink wink) will offer data quality segments so you can easily differentiate between which records have deliverable emails, direct dial phone numbers, and postal addresses before you even buy. 
   2. If you are a GPS software company with products like Google Maps, you’ll want the most accurate geographical locations to provide customers with the correct information. People using the app might show up to a business that is closed or has moved to a new location or call a number that has changed if accuracy is not considered.
3. Because data rapidly changes, frequent or real-time updates through automation and human verification is becoming more necessary.
   If you have a CRM system, for example, business addresses, telephone numbers, and URLs are changing by the hour. Updates to this type of data can help marketers and sales teams do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.
   Consider a data partner that updates their databases often, or one that uses an API to tackle these types of challenges because they allow them to access large databases.
   Every Market Media schedules data updates every 120 days using both human and automated verification for each of its four data products.

Easy integration

You may have data that you think is valuable, but unless it can integrate into a platform or product, it is essentially useless. It is important to look for data that is standardized, reliable, and in a flexible format.

Many CRMs and CDPs can upload flat files (.csv) of data fairly easy, but increasingly, more companies can directly integrate data via an API right where you need and use it. If it is not, make sure you have a data provider that offers technical support that can seamlessly integrate new data.

If you are purchasing data with the intent of adding it to an existing database, software, or tech platform, you’ll likely care about similar criteria, but you’ll generally be conducting your own data compilation measures to fit your particular database or product—this can include standardizing, cleaning-up, measurement, de-duplication, or other compilation measures.

Consider the costs

Think about how much the list will cost you and how much labor it will take to clean the usable data to add it to your database. Manually aggregating data can be an extremely labor-intensive process.

Having to sort through excel sheets, reformat them to match other sheets, de-duplicate, and create charts to compare progress/performance/budget requires a lot of labor to get it into a usable format.

It may be just as beneficial to purchase data that is cleaner and will require less work. If you are doing on-going data aggregation, you might want to consider this as a similar expenditure to customer acquisition costs.

The bottom line

As Rick Holmes, CEO of Every Market Media, stated, “Data aggregation has gotten a lot easier with all the data sources out there now, but also a lot harder since people are usually rehashing the same data over and over again.”

Too much volume, variety, velocity, and veracity is too challenging for organizations. But with a powerful combination of vertical expertise, technology, data controls, and a hands-on approach to customer success—you can get good, reliable aggregating marketing data—and that’s exactly what you’ll find at Every Market Media.

Are you ready to achieve your business goals with EMM? Contact us today! We look forward to speaking with you!