For any business, its database of customers and prospects is probably the most valuable thing. After all, if that wasn’t there, then who would you sell to in the first place? As an MSP, you would be having a decent prospect and client database as well, which you probably target in your regular marketing and sales campaigns. But, despite having an exhaustive database, a lot of MSPs find that they are not really able to make a breakthrough. Now, there could be 2 reasons for this. One, your marketing and sales campaigns are not up to the mark. For example, your messaging may be off, irrelevant, not resonating with your prospect database, or worse still, failing to even reach them. The second reason could be because your contact lists are not structured right. In this blog, we discuss how to fix the second challenge.

Segment your contacts
Start by segmenting your contacts into various types. For meaningful segmentation, you need to know your main prospect types. For example, as an MSP, you could probably segment your contacts by their industry such as, healthcare, legal services, accounting professionals etc. But, that’s just one way. You can have multiple forms of contact segmentation, such as, segmenting contacts by industry and/or by location.

Segmentation helps you target your contacts with very specific, relevant marketing and sales communications. For example, all your emails to contacts in the Healthcare industry can bear references to HIPAA regulations and how you can assist them with those, where as those to the CPAs can talk about how you can provide them with additional IT support during the tax season–when they are most busy.

Keep valid contacts only
Often, MSPs purchase or build contact lists over time, but don’t keep them updated. The contact lists contain outdated information and a lot of junk data. In fact, our research pointed out that around 38% of MSPs don’t work on a contact list once they build or purchase it, and tend to continue using it for years! Using and outdated list won’t help you get the marketing results you seek! Scrub your contact lists regularly–meaning, have someone verify the information on your contact list to ensure the contact information is up-to-date. Be sure to delete obsolete information and make sure there are no “Unsubscribed” contacts that you are reaching out to.

Remember that contacts are people!
Often, we think of data in the contact list as just that–data! But, this attitude towards your lists won’t help. You need to keep in mind that the names on your contact lists are individuals with their own likes and dislikes. Track their interaction with you. Do they regularly open your emails? Do they visit your blog often? Are they reading your whitepapers? Understand what interests them, what they are up to and then tweak your marketing and sales messaging to suit them.

A good MSP marketing automation program can help you do all of the above and more by automating the whole process for you. Yet, this is a continuous process which will demand your inputs consistently. For example, the lists you load into the marketing automation tool needs to be scrubbed manually to ensure data accuracy. If you think you are too caught up with your business to perform these routine marketing activities, you might want to check out The MSP Advantage Program (www.mspadvantageprogram.com) , the only MSP marketing and sales program in the marketplace that offers both–marketing and sales automation along with marketing and sales concierge support services, so you can focus 100% on running your business and serving your clients, without worrying about marketing nuances like contact list segmentation.