NetProspex - Blog

100 Million Contacts!

We've officially hit the 100 million mark for the number of contacts traded to the NetProspex db!

Read the full release.

"B2B companies share a common need to create demand today, this month, this quarter," said Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex.

"This milestone recognizes the success of crowd-sourcing as a way for companies to turn contacts they have into prospects they need. Gaining access to all potential buyers in their audience has accelerated the sales process of our clients, and is a great example of crowd sourcing in the fast-growing data cloud."

Clients using the NetProspex contact trading platform use the service to pool contacts gathered (i.e. at a trade show) and download carefully targeted new prospects.

"The trading community at NetProspex has been an integral tool for our sales and marketing efforts," said Tim Doscher, CTO of Enteracloud."What sets NetProspex apart is the information is consistently higher quality than other contact record providers. Their accurate data and ease of accessibility has been our secret weapon for direct access to decision makers."

According to Dave Kalstrom, founder of Outbound Excellence,"NetProspex's trading feature is a zero-cost way to grow prospect databases for clients."

Additionally, Michael Turi, President of Health Care Reach commented, "I continually use NetProspex as the trading user-interface is easy to use, I can find targeted emails for contacts, and the support team is great."

How to Create B2B Marketing Buzz: Part II

The Buzz Marketing Formula

Alice Farmiloe - Marketing & Katie Martell - Director of Buzz

What is buzz? For marketers, buzz is the amplification effect that happens when great content meets great promotion.

 

In B2B marketing, buzz-building incorporates content marketing, PR and web 2.0 platforms including email and social media.  

Buzz-building is one of the many tools for marketers today who want to create positive association, awareness, excitement, or anticipation about their product, message or service. 

In this two-part series, we'll explore the content and promotion strategy behind a successful buzz-building campaign by NetProspex.

• PART I: The Buzz Formula Part I: Buzz-worthy B2B content
• PART II: The Buzz Formula Part II: How to Create (and measure) B2B Buzz

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The Buzz Formula Part II: How to Create (and measure) B2B Buzz 

 Part II of the buzz formula is using PR and Web 2.0 to generate awareness, excitement, and positive buzz about your content. 

[ Great content] + [ Great PR & Web 2.0 Strategy ] = BUZZ

 

How to generate exposure:

1. Partner with a great PR agency

2. Target high profile media outlets, key industry pubs, and relevant bloggers

3. Empower your community of clients/employees/partners to share

4. Reach targeted prospects via email

5. Engage with the buzz, repurpose content and extend the conversation

Our strategy:

PR: We partnered with the North 6th Agency to develop a targeted media outreach plan that included top-tier media platforms such as Fox Business News and The Huffington Post, tech publications such as Business Insider and eConsultancy, as well as key industry bloggers including The Funnelholic and Savvy B2B Marketing. 

Web 2.0: We made it easy for everybody on the NetProspex team to share the social report with their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter networks, and encouraged them to do so via email.

We also reached out to organizations whose audiences would also benefit from the report, like Eloqua (marketing automation), who helped spread the good buzz: 

 

Email Marketing: Eating our own dog food, we downloaded a list of VPs and Directors of Marketing across the nation from NetProspex.com, and shared the report with them as a means of introducing our brand in a valuable, helpful way.  We also shared the report with our clients and newsletter subscribers.

Engagement and repurposing: We had staff on hand to answer questions about the report publicly via Twitter, on media sites that allowed comments, and on LinkedIn. To repurpose the report, an upcoming episode of The Social Call was dedicated to the findings, and one of the companies featured in the report, Volt Information Sciences, issued a press release announcing their spot in the rankings of our report.  

Measurement:

Following the launch of our 4th Social Business Report, we decided to see just how effective our content marketing campaign had been. While hard to quantify the readership of publications, the sharing of articles across Twitter is easily trackable. We used Tweet Reach to measure how many Twitter accounts had been exposed to our social report in the 2 weeks immediately following the launch by mentions of the term "NetProspex".

The results: we reached 1,200,218 people and created 4,582,340 impressions! 

Click here for TweetReach's definition of these two figures.  

Hint: TweetReach reads up to the last 5 days, so it's necessary to run multiple reports every 5 days or upgrade to their enterprise service.

Are you under pressure to explain the result, ROI, or value of your content marketing or PR spend? Figures like this demonstrate the exposure gained, and the reach achieved by your buzz-building strategy. 

 Special thanks to Alice Farmiloe, NetProspex Intern, for her buzz-building contributions! 

 

 

How to Create B2B Marketing Buzz: Part I

The Buzz Marketing Formula

Alice Farmiloe - Marketing & Katie Martell - Director of Buzz 

What is buzz? For marketers, buzz is the amplification effect that happens when great content meets great promotion.

In B2B marketing, buzz-building incorporates content marketing, PR and web 2.0 platforms including email and social media.  

Buzz-building is one of the many tools for marketers today who want to create positive association, awareness, excitement, or anticipation about their product, message or service. 

In this two-part series, we'll explore the content and promotion strategy behind a successful buzz-building campaign by NetProspex. 

• The Buzz Formula Part I: Buzz-worthy B2B content
• The Buzz Formula Part II: How to Create (and measure) B2B Buzz

 ***

 

PART I: The Buzz Formula Part I: Buzz-worthy B2B content

Part I of the buzz formula is developing something worth the buzz. "Let's give 'em something to talk about" should be your mantra! 

[ Great content ] + [ Great PR & Web 2.0 Strategy ] = BUZZ

How to create buzz-worth B2B content:

1. Do your research. 

Just as markets can be saturated with similar product offerings or services, the media your audience consumes can be overwhelmed with lookalike content. Write and create something different, something valuable, and something new. 

2. Tell a story

We're inclined to relate to and digest stories, with characters, settings, and plots. This style is a surefire way to write your content so it hooks and engages your audience. 

3. Be entertaining

What is the most viewed content on the web? Funny cat videos and silly memes like dancing hamsters and people laying face-down in unexpected places. There's enough distracting your audience, even your technical B2B buyer, so don't waste your (or your readers) time with boring content. 

4. Be informative

Is your content useful and valuable to your reader? Will it help them do their job better today or next week? Does it position you as a brand to trust and work with? Let's hope so. So much marketing is fluff, BS, jargon, and gobbledygook. Knock it off. If it's not useful, don't try to pretend it is. Be a resource, be informative, and always create value.

5. Relate to your bigger brand picture. 

Your brand story connects your company mission to your products/services in an engaging, relatable way. Your content should add to that story, and speak to what kind of company you are and how you can help. 

How NetProspex created buzz-worthy content: The NetProspex Social Business Report

As a business prospect database, we have millions of records containing job titles and social media profiles for contacts in thousands of industries and geographic markets. This asset was the foundation for our Social Business Report. 

1. 12 million contacts with social media profiles in our database were analyzed. 

2. We told a story of the evolution of business communication by illustrating the widespread adoption of social media within the US business community. 

3. The data was easy to digest visually with stellar-looking infographics. 

4. To maximize relevance, we categorized our findings by company, industry, job function, and city. 

5. Our branding story was the key here. As the first B2B prospect database to incorporate social data in our records, the report reflects our dedication to helping clients reach new customers with the latest aspects of business communication, including social media. 

Read the full report -- and check out Part II to find out how we created buzz around the report and its findings. 

NetProspex Just Got Seriously Social

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background

Here at NetProspex, the last 2 weeks have been pretty exciting. Following the success of our prior Social Business Reports, we just released the Summer 2011 edition . Our aim was to illustrate the widespread social media adoption in the US business community.

It is our most comprehensive study to date, with more research, insights, and data than ever before. Our team analyzed 12 million businesspeople from the NetProspex database of crowd-sourced business contacts to provide a snapshot of social media activity and trends among employees of the nation’s largest corporations, industries, cities, and job functions.

This is definitely the LARGEST focus group we have ever seen.

Methodology

The findings were gathered by using the NetProspex Social Index (NPSI). This was used to score and rank social network activity across the top social networks, including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

This score comprised of social media presence (the number of employees in a category with social media profiles registered under a business email address), and social connectedness (the average number of connections per employee across major social networks). 

In this fourth edition, more contacts were analyzed, more granular categories were targeted, there was a focus on Twitter use, and the methodology was substantially updated, with several new, comprehensive categories added to the analysis.

Key Findings

Our report ranks the top performers and breaks them down by company, industry, job title and geographic region and includes eye-catching infographics and data visualization.

The most notable findings include:

• The New York Times is the most social company, with Intuit close behind, both zooming past Google & Microsoft

•  Technology companies dominated the Top 10 rankings

• The Computer Technology industry is the most socially savvy industry in the US

• Recruiting ranked as the most social job category, bypassing even communications and marketing professionals

• The Silicon Valley takes the crown for the most social cities, with San Francisco and San Jose taking 1st & 2nd place respectively. These contributed toward the West coast beating the East coast in the Top 10 list.

 Media Coverage

Our previous three reports all earned coverage in hundreds of media outlets, and have been used as reference material in business and educational presentations, studies, and reports. The 4th edition has seen a phenomenal response within the first week of launch. 

The findings were published in The Huffington Post, Business Insider, and many other regional publications and technology outlets. Our very own Mike Bird appeared on Fox News last Tuesday, discussing how roots of social media are really taking hold within the business community. 

Here at NetProspex we believe social media to be a natural evolution of B2B business communication. As B2C companies know well, businesses have to be where their customers are (after all, if you’re not, you quickly become irrelevant.) In a B2B world, brands must acknowledge that their buyers, whether the Director of IT or the HR manager, are active on social networks in their day-to-day workplace. 

Today, businesspeople are having conversations in a public forum, about brands, solutions, trends and opinions.

This was reflected on Twitter where the news of our Social Report spread to almost 1 million accounts (analyzed by TweetReach).  Feedback included repeated comments such as; ‘great insights into social business’ and ‘interesting stuff you guys are doing’ with requests to even expand this study to examine global social media trends!

This social media frontier needs to be continuously embraced by B2B companies worldwide as they realize that being social is not just personal, it’s business.

You can see the full report here.

 

Alice Farmiloe - Marketing @ NetProspex

NetProspex Reports Record Growth and Platform Enhancements

WALTHAM, Mass., May 17, 2011  -- Leading sales and marketing contact database firm NetProspex Inc., today announced a number of major achievements following the $5.5 million venture capital financing round led by leading information technology investment firm Edison Ventures in December 2010.

The momentum created since funding has helped the company firmly establish itself as the world's most accurate and fastest growing platform for finding B-to-B decision makers.

Since the start of 2011, NetProspex expanded its database of user-generated business contacts by more than 30 percent. Now boasting a total of 21 million verified B-to-B contacts, NetProspex is used by thousands of sales and marketing professionals seeking to generate new business leads with the most accurate, targeted contacts across industries.

NetProspex has added well over 100 new clients, including the Business Information Solutions group at LexisNexis.

"NetProspex's track record for quality business contact information and continual database growth was key to our working with them," said Tom Ogburn, VP and Managing Director at LexisNexis. "Our relationship enables us to further solidify the LexisNexis position as a leader in the corporate research market and to provide our customers with new ways to generate better outcomes for their businesses."

The rapid growth of NetProspex also includes a 35 percent increase in staff since the start of 2011, including industry veterans with experience at companies such as Thomson Reuters, Akamai Technologies, Dow Jones, D&B, OneSource, and Art Technology Group. Key hires include Tim Burns as VP of Sales, Jimmy Becker as SVP of Content, and veteran product strategist Bruce McCarthy as VP of Product.

In addition to client, staff and database growth, NetProspex has also added several new features to its business contact search tool, enabling customers to target sales prospects in the most granular and measurable way in the industry. Included among the new targeting features are standard industrial classification code (SIC code) down to the 8-digit level, company revenue range and employee count, and precision geographic targeting.

"We are continuing to innovate and add precision targeting to the sales prospecting space," said Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex. "Thanks to our continued staff, client, and database growth - as well as the ideas coming from our team - NetProspex has solidified itself as the most trusted, targeted and reliable sales and marketing contact partner in the industry."

For more information on NetProspex, please visit: www.NetProspex.com.

LexisNexis Business Information Solutions delivers an unmatched collections of the worlds' most reputable and productive tools that helps professionals uncover new opportunities, work more efficiently and safeguard business assets.

About NetProspex
NetProspex is the world's most accurate and fastest-growing sales and marketing database, helping B-to-B decision makers find, reach, and connect with more than 21 million sales prospects in a uniquely direct and measurable way.

Founded in 2006 by online publishing and marketing industry veterans Gary Halliwell and Jeff Clewley, NetProspex understands that effective sales and marketing efforts require the most in-depth and accurate prospect data. The core product line overlays crowd-sourced, user-contributed contact information with proprietary verification technology to produce an entirely unique and highly effective sales and marketing contact database. With a 100% replacement guarantee and continual data scrubbing, NetProspex is the leading source of accurate, crowd-sourced business intelligence.

Media Contact:
Matt Rizzetta

North 6th Agency
718-744-7138
mrizzetta@north6thagency.com

 

NetProspex pulls in $5.5M Series B financing

NetProspex Inc. has raised $5.5 million in a Series B round led by Edison Venture Fund. Some of the angel investors who backed the Waltham B2B lead-generation company in its 2009 $2 million Series A round returned to participate in the second round of equity financing, which brings Netprospex’ total investment to $7.5 million, to date.

Read the full article.

Killer KPIs: 10 Key Performance Indicators for Marketing ROI

Marketers, you know that it is critical to measure what you want to manage. How do you measure efficiently? Relevantly? How do you know what to DO with the results?   NetProspex helps marketers begin targeted campaigns, and have teamed up with the folks at Rubicon Marketing to provide a really interesting webinar on measuring ROI using Key Performance Indicators. The reality is that with just a few KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and a tactical road map, marketers can show value immediately within their organizations and have a foundation of marketing effectiveness to drive killer results. Register now for this free webinar Wednesday, April 7th at 2:00pm EST Thursday, April 8th at 2:00pm EST You will learn: ·         How to define KPIs for your marketing organization ·         Top 10 KPIs that successful marketers use ·         Where to find the data points you need to measure ·         Insight you can use based on analytics Stop guessing, and start proving the ROI of your efforts with effective KPI marketing measurement. Registrants are eligible for a free trial account of NetProspex and 100 B2B contacts. Rubicon Marketing Group is offering registrants a discounted Marketing Intelligence Audit to understand your current reporting structure as well as provide recommendations on analyzing the most relevant metrics. Registrants will automatically be entered into a drawing for a FREE Audit! Register now for this free webinar Wednesday, April 7th at 2:00pm EST Thursday, April 8th at 2:00pm EST Rubicon Marketing

Release: NetProspex Grows Database to Over 10 Million Verified Business Contacts

Leading sales and marketing contact database reaches company milestone; grows database to 10 million verified contacts

WALTHAM, Mass., March 16 /PRNewswire/ -- NetProspex Inc., the world's most accurate and fastest-growing sales and marketing contact database, today announced that its database has reached in excess of 10 million verified, user-contributed business contacts. The milestone achievement comes just days after the company announced a record number of contacts were traded into its database over a one week period.

The 10 million-plus business contacts that are now in the NetProspex system span more than 150 industries and 70 job titles across North America.  Since 2006 the NetProspex brand has become synonymous with providing reliable and easy-to-access business contact information to marketers and business decision makers through its contact exchange system and CleneStep verification process.

"The fact that we were able to achieve the 10 million contacts milestone including a rigorous verification process is quite an achievement," said Jeff Clewley, CTO of NetProspex. "Not only do marketers and sales executives now have a vast network of over 10 million contacts to utilize for their business development strategies, but they can also be assured that these 10 million contacts have undergone an intense verification process through the NetProspex CleneStep process."

CleneStep(TM) is a proprietary verification process which has distinguished NetProspex from others in the business contact database industry, and has helped the brand achieve accuracy ratings that are well above industry standards. In this process, NetProspex filters out inaccurate contact data with a series of steps including email address and live phone validation to ensure all contact information is updated and accurate.

"This announcement validates the NetProspex model and philosophy," said Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex. "Our high standards have proven successful within a business community that is increasingly using marketing and sales force automation, which relies on information that is constantly updated and accurate," Halliwell added.

This announcement continues to build on the momentum NetProspex has achieved recently, and solidify its presence as a leading sales and marketing tool for business decision-makers. Over the past year alone, the company has increased its customer base by more than 150% and achieved steady quarterly revenue growth.  The company also achieved prestigious recognition from business media analyst firm Outsell Inc. as being one of the top 30 media companies to watch in 2010.

For more information on NetProspex, including contact trading details, customer registration information and a list of customers, please visit: www.NetProspex.com.

About NetProspex

NetProspex is the world's most accurate and fastest-growing sales and marketing database, helping BtoB decision makers find, reach, and connect with nearly 10 million sales prospects in a uniquely direct and measurable way.

Founded in 2006 by online publishing and marketing industry veterans Gary Halliwell and Jeff Clewley, NetProspex understands that effective sales and marketing efforts require the most in-depth and accurate prospect data. The core product line overlays crowd-sourced, user-contributed contact information with proprietary verification technology to produce an entirely unique and highly effective sales and marketing contact database. With a 100% replacement guarantee and continual data scrubbing, NetProspex is the leading source of accurate, crowd-sourced business intelligence.

Read the release on PR Newswire.

NetProspex and Rapleaf Partner to Add Social Layer to Business Contacts

Fast-growing sales and marketing database joins forces with social data provider to bring social media components to directory of 9 million-plus verified business contacts

WALTHAM, Mass., March 1 -- NetProspex Inc., the world's most accurate and fastest-growing sales and marketing contact database, today announced a premiere partnership deal with Rapleaf.

NetProspex and Rapleaf have joined forces to add a social layer of data to NetProspex's crowd-sourced business contact directory, which allows B2B marketers to successfully decipher the social demographics of business prospects and customers for the first time.

Leveraging Rapleaf's capabilities as the largest provider of online social data, NetProspex now makes it possible for B2B marketers to pinpoint the most socially-connected business decision-makers on the internet.

"The addition of social data to NetProspex' business contact directory is the Rosetta Stone between business people and their social presence," said Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex. "To be able to determine who are the most influential decision makers allows B2B marketers to more efficiently segment markets and determine the marketing mix for each segment. We are facilitating the conversation through social media channels, allowing B2B marketers to engage prospects, customers, and partners with a new level of insight and intelligence."

NetProspex customers will be able to:

• Easily link to a business prospect's social media persona
• Let sales and marketing executives find and follow buyer conversations
• Identify social influencers within customer and prospect groups

"Combining NetProspex' focus on providing a crowd-sourced directory of accurate, verified business contacts with social media information provides the key to unlocking the potential of social media for business to business communication," adds Rapleaf CEO Auren Hoffman.

About NetProspex

NetProspex is the world's most accurate and fastest-growing sales and marketing database, helping BtoB decision makers find, reach, and connect with nearly 10 million sales prospects in a uniquely direct and measurable way.

Founded in 2006 by online publishing and marketing industry veterans Gary Halliwell and Jeff Clewley, NetProspex understands that effective sales and marketing efforts require the most in-depth and accurate prospect data. The core product line overlays crowd-sourced, user-contributed contact information with proprietary verification technology to produce an entirely unique and highly effective sales and marketing contact database. With a 100% replacement guarantee and continual data scrubbing, NetProspex is the leading source of accurate, crowd-sourced business intelligence.

About Rapleaf

Rapleaf provides social data about a company's customers to help businesses gain audience insight, boost user engagement, and acquire more customers.

In particular, Rapleaf offers insight into customer influence and sociability, social network use, demographics, lifestyles and interests, purchase behavior, brand affinities, and more. This data helps businesses improve their customer experience through the ability to better segment customers, identify influencers, socialize CRM, and to buy targeted display ads.

Today, Rapleaf has fresh data on over 350 million people worldwide and helps leading businesses from all industries drive conversions and optimize both online and offline marketing efforts. For more information, please visit www.rapleaf.com.

5 examples of users changing business models in the publishing world - Notes from SIIA

The publishing industry is coming alive... thanks to users. 

That's my take away from last week's digital information industry’s flagship conference, the SIIA Information Industry Summit. No matter the media, whether it be music, books, newspapers or business media, the themes are the same. Users are getting in on the act and content is alive because of that. Form is changing in every publishing model and publishers recognize that new forms provide vastly increased product and business opportunity.

In thinking about the various publishing media over the past few days after the conference, I couldn't help notice examples of how users are impacting each of the publishing media among the people I know. Here's a few tales from my neighborhood (literally) that illustrate what's going on and how pervasive this already is across publishing:

1. The music industry leads the way, not as an industry but at the user level.

Take a look at our friend and neighbor's son Samuel (The Wiz) Adams music video "I hate college" on YouTube with nearly one million views and was posted as a response to Asher Roth's hit "I love College". Sampling and mash-ups are redefining the form of music and the result is that instead of simply listening to each others music, artists are resonating with each other and Joe Public is not only getting in on the act, but is redefining the industry.

The result is that music performers are beginning to sing together in almost a real-time conversation. Sam is currently negotiating a record contract with one of the majors, which looks like a win-win for the music industry and these new stakeholders in the equation...the public.

2. Japanese cartoons, or anime, provides a great example of this reverb effect.

Another local in my neighborhood, Ian Condry, Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at MIT works as a cultural anthropologist and studies online sharing (or piracy) in the circulation of anime, which turns out to be vital to the industry and to the transnational flow of Japanese culture to and from America and Europe, even if the industry seldom recognizes its value. More simply put, kids around the world love Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon, and its more upper-teen versions such as Mushi-shi, a bizarre, otherworldly suspense series. The anime industry is a master of the formless and the form, and is a publisher's dream. Anime pops-up everywhere, from cartoons to trading cards to video gaming and movies.

Anime relies on a connected network of users/creators that keep the industry alive. Ian Condry tells of a strange world of "in-between" animators, talented kids who live, sleep and eat as an integral part of anime production. But maybe most important are the unpaid non-Japanese fans or "fansubs", who add translated subtitles and then distribute the latest, hard-to-get anime. Anime is the most evolved example of how electronic media resonates through a conversation with its fan base and creators regardless of national boundaries.

3. Newspapers are also getting in on the act.

Newspapers have figured out that virtual real estate on their website isn't as confined as the restriction of print space. On the internet, newspapers find the additional space on websites can be put to good effect by letting the smartest minds out there compete for guest columns. Take a look at Anthony Goodman's column on the FT.  Anthony describes the arrangement as a clear win-win. The newspaper get high quality, free content. The writer gets the platform and the voice that is leveraged across their business and career.

4. Book publishers have to close their eyes and jump into the ebook.

The possibilities are endless and therefore difficult to predict. But these examples are all fundamental shifts in how media works and really exciting. There was a lot of talk and uncertainty at SIIA around the book publishing industry, which is next up to dive into this digital transition with the arrival of ebook readers like Kindle and now the Apple iPad. The opportunity is immense, but the change in form is as yet unclear.

The "book" is a ghost in the machine that both publishers and users have yet to come to grips with. What does that mean exactly? Well a book is a form based on old-world paper and printing technologies. There is no reason why the book in its current form of 200 to 400 pages needs to exist in the digital world.  At its core the book is a story, and stories can be any size or length. How users will contribute to this space and use this freedom is still hazy, but the models above provide the signposts and the prognosis is that book publishing like other media will come alive as a result.

5. The staid world of business media is also changing.

Our own company NetProspex is a social business media tool for sales people, so we are in the thick of these transitions and NetProspex was proud to be one of several new business models previewed at the SIIA conference. NetProspex allows business-to-business sales people pool their business contacts and the sum of the parts is a directory of business executives and their contact information that has a fantastic impact on business efficiency.

People are in business to do business and they need to know what tools and services can provide more revenue for their companies or reduce costs. By pooling resources, sales people can get their message out to more potential customers who buy products on behalf of their companies. For NetProspex the challenge is that about 25% of people change jobs each year, and any directory of business executives soon gets out of date. NetProspex solves that part of the equation by cleaning and scrubbing the data to make sure its accurate up-to-date.

Our business is embracing these changes because in the digital age it is clear to us that information is a living thing and user contribution is key to that life.