Barbour ABI and Glenigan both allow you to create tailored data exports of their construction project information. You can choose the types of projects you’re interested in, select the roles of the people you want to speak to, then download all of that information as an excel document. You can upload this list of construction sales leads to a mail merge, CRM, or email marketing service.
Then, you have a targeted list, built by hand by researchers, of all the people working in the UK construction industry that you’re interested in speaking to.
An email blast would be the easiest thing to send out, but not the best. You have one chance at a first impression, and an email promoting your brand doesn’t usually land well. There are better ways to use the data.
Here are three of the top-performing uses of the Barbour ABI or Glenigan data:
1. Targeted content
If you’re an architect, working on a hospital, how would you feel about getting a guide to specifying heating solutions for hospitals? It would be helpful. That’s why targeting is important. Because it allows you to send relevant content at the right time to help your customers.
What type of content should you send? Things such as checklists, guides, and articles work well. Don’t have any? Talk to our partners at Insynth Marketing. They can create this content for you. It will help you drive traffic to your website, but it also works really well to connect with your audience in an outbound channel like cold-email.
2. Video email
The challenge with email marketing is creating engaging emails. Sometimes emails land in your inbox and just sit there. They’re boring.
The solution is not a pretty template with pictures and colours and logos. These types of emails don’t work as well as personal, one-to-one emails. Good old-fashioned plain text is the way to go.
How do you make a plain text email more interesting? By including a video. We increased engaged leads in a client campaign from 3 to 32 in 2 weeks using simple video he recorded on his computer. That’s a percentage increase of 966%.
Video is taking over the internet. Here’s a great article from Wix with more on this: These 7 Alarming Stats Will Convince You to Use Video Marketing. Statistics aside, let’s think about it on a personal level. Wouldn’t you rather watch something than read it?
The only caveat would probably be when you’re looking for detailed information. Then you want the datasheets. But if it’s top-level information, most people would much rather watch a video.
3. CPD promotion
If you’re selling to architects, they’re required to complete 35 hours of CPD to be a RIBA certified architect. This is about one lunchtime session per week.
Barbour ABI and Glenigan provide all the information you need to start booking yourself into one of those spots. Simply download the list of architects working on the type of projects your product is built for, and then create a CPD campaign.
Our tip here is to make it as frictionless as possible to book a CPD. A great way to do this is to include a virtual meeting link. This way they can book a time directly from the email, instead of arranging it through a series of back-and-forth emails.
Our experience indicates that a virtual meeting link increases bookings by 8x.
Conclusion
Finding construction sales leads is easy with the help of Barbour ABI or Glenigan. What you do next is the crucial bit. And if you’re planning on using them for email campaigns, spending the time to make sure you think through your campaign is important. A promotional message won’t earn you any attention.
By aligning your message with the interests and concerns of your contacts, you can send them the right content at the right time. By including a video, you can make it more entertaining. And by offering CPD, you can get face-to-face time with your audience, and demonstrate your expertise, in a way that does not interrupt their day.
And the thing that makes this so effective is the quality of the data. Knowing that your contact is working on a relevant project.
If you’d like advice about what type of campaign to run for your company feel free to reach out for a free consultation. We’ll talk through your audience, your marketing assets, and a few different approaches that we’ve seen work.