There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to marketing for businesses of all shapes and sizes in different industries across the world. When we are working with clients who have spent months developing marketing strategies internally, there are always small “pieces of tinder” or simple mistakes left unseen that turn into fires later when it’s time to launch. However, we often see the same “fire” raging inside otherwise successful businesses: a huge database full of unengaged leads, taking up space, confusing marketers.

A Full Database of Unengaged Contacts

It is very common for companies to have a massive database with thousands of emails and names. This would be ideal if all of them were engaging with your product or service and you were profiting from it. However, this is not usually the case. Many of these contacts, sometimes over half, sit in your database and never engage with any of the emails and calls you send their way. Why? Well, first of all, they may not want to be bothered or you may not be approaching them with the right strategy in mind. Every time a customer or potential customer interacts with your brand, there should be a goal, strategy, and approach figured out beforehand. If you don’t have a clear reason for contacting them, why should they engage with you in the first place?

Identify Your Goal

Start with your goal. If your database has unengaged contacts and you don’t know what they want, or whether their information is up-to date, or if they are even aware you exist, this is your opportunity to set your course by outlining specific purposes of awareness campaigns to select groups of contacts. Identify who you are going to target, what the overarching objective or KPIs are, and what channels you are going to use to reach them for a successful conversion. Start small and expand slowly!

Identify Your Content

Next, we advise identifying key pieces of content you either need to have or need to develop for your buyer personas. You need to think about which pieces of content will help you reach your goal. For instance, if your goal is to get your unengaged list to click in an email and be directed to a landing page with a downloadable asset on it, then the messaging of the email, the landing page, and the asset need to be developed with that in specific goal in mind.

Identifying Your Campaign Targets

Now, with a huge list of unengaged people, there needs to be some segmentation put in place. You can’t target everyone at once! This is a much more manual process, but it helps to export your entire database into a CSV file, look at all the fields you have and determine which data fields are missing or blank. Look and see what the data tells you about each person. If you can read the data and start seeing where your buyer personas can be aligned, then segment off of that first. Remember, start small and expand out later.

Put Out the Unengaged Fire

Once you launch your initial awareness campaign, you need to be willing to let those who are simply not engaging with your content go. It is not worth your company’s time and resources to invest in people who will never help your company flourish and grow the way it needs to. Tailor your time, money, and content always with a goal, strategy, and approach in mind. Don’t be afraid to make changes to your database to tailor your current needs in today’s environment. Business is changing; so should your database.