List Building

A target market is a list of companies that another company is prospecting in order to get new business. It is often a portion of the total addressable market (TAM). This specific group of people are the ones who a marketer wants to angle their efforts towards converting into customers.

A top prospect list is a small segment of your total addressable market (TAM). They are mostly ideal or dream customers. These top prospect lists include well-known companies that are usually much larger deal sizes than the rest of the target market. Top prospect lists are typically assigned to an account executive, who has a lot of sales experience, so they can build long term relationships and not have sales development reps muddying the waters or losing potential deals.

The total addressable market (TAM) is a list of every single company that another company can sell their product or services to. Often the TAM is a great starting point when developing an outbound sales development strategy. It is important to know first how large your market is before executing a plan. For example, if a company has a large target market they take more of a "pray and spray" approach, which means they send out large amounts of marketing material in the hope that some customers will bite. On the other hand, if a company has a very small TAM, then they must create a very thoughtful outbound campaign that's most likely centered around direct mail and direct mail follow up.

Intent data is used to identify customers who are actively searching for a service or product. It analyzes a person's online behavior. In its most modern format, intent data is typically collected using web-based cookies on large media sites and publishers. For example, the company would have a greater propensity of intent if they were googled about their services or products, or read an article or publication about a relevant service. For example, if a company was selling SEO tech, they could use intent data to build a list of companies that are actively researching new SEO technologies. The largest intent data provider is Bombora.

List building is a process of building a targeted account and contact list for the purpose of sales outreach. There are many tools that can help a sales team build lists. These tools often contain contact info, and different company characteristics such as what technologies they use. By leveraging data partners, list building is a very important process to identify the target market and the decision makers within it.

List cleaning is a process in which a list is refined into a more specific list that can be used for marketing. Stages in the list cleaning process include making sure that first names are spelled correctly, checking that company names are the conversational name and not the legal name, and validating contacts to make sure the contacts will not bounce. List cleaning in regards to emails gets rid of outdated emails from the database.