Expert Advice

I have just started to look at purchasing data. I was promised that this data was the bee knees and on purchasing it I ran a test only to find that it was total inaccurate!

Can you recommend a good data source or advise on the purchasing of data records.

Robert Jennings, Business Development Manager, Creative Jar

A. A good data source would normally depend on your target market.  There are numerous companies that sell data direct from Thomson or Yellow pages. This data covers a wide spectrum of the market - all be it the largest Blue Chip companies - and is updated on average every 12-18 months. 

This information is usually site level providing customers with a named contact and potential access to phone, fax and email addresses. If you are targeting a particular market sector or seeking specific data items - records pertaining to fleet data or businesses of a certain square footage, for example, then you will usually need to approach an agency specialising in those areas.

Though the total data file they offer may only be circa. 100-300k records - compared to the 2-3m records available from a UK wide database - you can usually rely on greater accuracy because at these more manageable volumes the updates are likely to be far more frequent.

Ideally, you should be choosing your provider based on the target market.  Most of the online marketing magazines carry adverts for list providers and a quick scan of their websites should give you enough information to see which category they fall into.  Find out the update frequency of their data.  Do they have their own calling team or do they rely on large database vendors to maintain the file?  What proactive measures do they take to maintain standards? And, finally, will they work with you to get the targeting right and promptly support you with any problems or questions you raise? See our best practice guide on evaluating a data supplier here for additional help.  Good luck.