From data collection to creating B2B lists for potential leads, marketing has been seriously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The biggest factors being the increase in people working remotely and the phenomenal turnover rate businesses are experiencing. Recent statistics have shown that one-third of new employees are quitting after about six months.
According to the federal Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, a record 4.3 million workers resigned in August 2021. Only 13.4 percent of workers were still logging on from home by the final month of summer. Despite this small percentage, a much larger portion still finds a work-from-home option attractive, and that may just be the key to retention. 74 percent of workers say that having a remote work opportunity would make them less likely to leave a company, and 64 percent of recruiters report that being able to pitch a work-from-home policy helps them find high-quality talent.
These factors have made it exceedingly difficult to collect reliable information for direct B2B marketing, largely due to the challenge of how to manage such constantly shifting data points. “I think individuals have more freedom of choice now than they did in the past for work, which makes information a lot more difficult to procure,” explains Sky Cassidy, CEO of MountainTop Data. “New data points are coming in, but you can’t mail somebody something at the office because this person is not even in the same state as the company’s office anymore and that information isn’t available.”
This new reality adds another layer of difficulty to keeping B2B lists of potential leads up to date. While it isn’t the employers who are unhappy with employees—approximately 60 to 70% of all the turnover is voluntary (5)—the turnover situation is getting more chaotic. It also means that data companies will have to work harder and more diligently than ever, which could open the door for unethical companies to collect information in ways that are not above board. Cassidy emphasizes that the need for transparency is dire to avoid Trojan horse scenarios where bad actors hide their data collection intentions behind the sale of a product to trick consumers. Companies must respond to these practices with more diligence and data competence. Targeted B2B marketing data from a source that is aware of the changes in data is one way to address the increasingly scattered nature of business contact information, Cassidy notes.
“Moving forward, people need to know more—they need to know the likelihood that the phone number is accurate, that the email is accurate, that the contact’s actually at that company. Data collection is becoming a hunt and to be successful one needs two things: patience and transparency,” Cassidy says.
MountainTop Data, headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, has been providing data services for B2B marketing for almost two decades. With an unrelenting commitment to quality, they were the first company to guarantee the accuracy of their licensed data and business emails. They provide marketing lists, data cleaning, data appending and data maintenance services. Their data services have been used by some of the world’s biggest brands across a multitude of various industries from multi-national telecommunication companies to office technology, to PR firms and more.
