Email Marketing Database: What It Is and How to Create One

Email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools for businesses. Forbes reported that over 87% of marketers consider B2B email marketing a key element of success, helping you to reach your audience, nurture leads, and drive conversions.

But sending emails without a logical strategy simply won’t work. That’s why your business needs a well-structured email marketing database. At EM360Tech, we have our own extensive database connecting our clients with 1000s of IT professionals, enabling you to make those strong connections needed to turn qualifying leads into sales.

To get you on the right track, let’s explore email marketing databases, how it differs from a simple B2B email list, and how to create your own.

What is an Email Marketing Database?

An email marketing database is a comprehensive catalogue of email addresses and other relevant information about your prospects. It enables you to keep track of your customers and use the information to inform targeted marketing campaigns by catering to specific user data.

It can include:

• Contact details.
• Demographic data.
• Customer preferences.
• Customer browsing history.
• Previous purchase history.

The more comprehensive your database, the deeper you can segment your audience based on unique properties, allowing you to personalise emails and ensure content resonates with the recipient.

Email marketing database vs email list

It’s common to believe an email marketing database is the same as an email list. Yet, this is far from truthful. They are different tools, though both involve storing and managing prospect information.

The information stored in an email marketing database is collected over time by tracking user behaviour, website interactions, and key user attributes. An email marketing database provides deeper insights and data analysis opportunities. Meanwhile, a B2B email list is a basic collection of email addresses used to send marketing emails to customers.

How to Create an Email Marketing Database

There are a few actions to lay the foundations for the database…

Define your target audience

Before you create an email database, you need to have a solid understanding of your target audience. This includes identifying:

• Who your audience is: demographics, occupation, industry.
• Their pain points: what does your service help solve?
• How they engage with your brand: website? Social media? Events?
• Their content consumption behaviours and preferences. 

Knowing exactly who your audience is enables you to tailor content, encourage sign ups, and increase engagement levels.

Choose an email marketing platform

To gather accurate data and manage it effectively, it’s crucial to invest in an email marketing platform. Rather than using Excel Spreadsheets, an email marketing platform:

• Enables you to automate data collection.
• Reduces data duplication and improves data accuracy.
• Allows for advanced audience segmentation.
• Offers automation functionality, e.g., sending follow up emails and nurturing leads.

Ditching the spreadsheets means your data is more secure and easy to manage. A reliable email marketing platform is important for creating your email marketing database efficiently.

There are many platforms to consider, including HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Klaviyo. These are unique, as is your business, so it’s important to research your options with your needs and budget in mind.

Once you’ve chosen an email marketing platform, it’s time to import any existing contacts you have. Make sure the data is clean and up-to-date before importing to ensure your new email database is fit for use. Most platforms have integration features, allowing you to import data with ease.

Identify how best to gather prospect information

Your business email marketing strategy plays an important role in gathering prospect data. How are you going to collect information about your customers and generate potential leads?

Here are some useful data collection methods:

• Pop-up forms on your website for users to enter their information.
• Gated content to encourage email sign ups to access premium content.
• Lead magnets — these are free resources such as templates, reports, and eBooks.
• Social media campaigns to drive sign ups.

Utilise segmentation

To send relevant emails to your audience, segmentation is key. By segmenting your contacts into different categories based on their demographics, interests, and behaviours, you can tailor email campaigns more effectively. 

Most email marketing platforms have segmentation functionality. Here are some categories to consider:

• Demographic - age, gender, location, occupation, etc.
• Date-driven - based on birthdays, anniversaries, renewals and purchases.
• Behavioural - user interactions such as website browsing, purchasing history, previous engagement metrics.

By segmenting your email database, you can send out timely, tailored content that addresses the needs and demographics of your audience. For example, you might offer a range of B2B services. You can utilise database segmentation to ensure the client receives communications relevant to their own business, such as content marketing.

This activity forms a significant element of building your email database, as it allows you to manage large amounts of data and seamlessly target grouped prospects. There’s only so much you can with a manual spreadsheet, so segmentation function is essential.

Email Marketing Database Best Practices

An email marketing database starts with sign ups and customers, so you need to encourage prospects to sign up or engage with your brand first. Below are some of our best practices.

1. Create sign up forms

A sign up form should include any necessary fields you need to store information correctly. Most sign up forms ask for basic information, such as contact name and email address. What your form includes depends on what you need to carry out future actions. For example, if you’re encouraging users to schedule a call, they will need to leave their phone number.

Place these forms strategically on your website. Start with your home page—this is what users typically see first when searching for a brand. You can embed the form into the page or create a pop up.

You can also build a dedicated landing page for your sign up form. That way, you can link to that page in other marketing materials and communications. For instance, adding a link to the landing page to your email communication can encourage sign ups and consensual data collection as a result.

2. Regularly audit your email database

A key part of managing your email marketing database is ensuring all information is correct, up-to-date and necessary to store. There are different practices to consider, including:

• Identify hard bounces through email performance analytics and remove contact details.
• Remove invalid email addresses and associated information.
• Delete duplicate data.
• Implement double-opt in and ensure privacy compliance.
• Provide clear, accessible unsubscribe options.
• Run re-engagement campaigns to clean up the database.

Regular clean ups are beneficial to your business, as it helps to improve email deliverability, boost engagement rates, and maintain your communications reputation.

3. Create useful, relevant content

High-quality content that resonates with your target audience is the goal. Doing so helps you to attract new leads and entices them to convert. 

Communicating your services and how these can benefit your customers is a best practice for email marketing. This encourages them to sign up and increases the likelihood of the user staying subscribed to your communications.

Your email marketing strategy has to have a purpose. Our previous tips on segmentation are useful here, as you can ensure you send the right content at the right time. When developing email campaigns, here are some action points to consider:

• Communicate the immediate and long-term benefits of your services / product.
• Provide free content or exclusive early access to resources.
• Personalise content so the recipient feels understood and seen.

EM360Tech’s database, for instance, sends emails to recipients with information on podcasts based on their specific interests.

Tap into 1000s of B2B Professionals

Building and maintaining an efficient email marketing database is essential for your business to reach its targeted audience. Through meaningful engagement practices and personalised content, you can send communications that truly resonate with the recipient. 

Growing a detailed database of relevant customer information takes time, effort, and the right strategy. Here at EM360Tech, we simplify this process by offering our clients access to an exclusive database of 1000s of IT professionals, C-suite executives, and key decision makers in the B2B industry. 

So, whether you’re looking to expand your network, generate high-quality MQLs, or deliver thought-leadership content, we can connect you with a range of B2B professionals. By leveraging our database, you can streamline your lead generation activities and boost conversion rates with data-driven insights. Get in touch with us today to take your email marketing to new heights.

Creating A Lead Generation Strategy That Works With EM360Tech

A successful lead generation strategy combines high-quality content, targeted outreach, and data-driven insights. By avoiding the lead generation mistakes we’ve addressed, you can work on improving the quality of the leads you attract and boost conversion rates.

EM360Tech provides businesses with an extensive catalogue of lead generation services: guaranteed high-quality MQLS, expert thought-leadership content, a global network of C-suite and IT decision-makers, and performance analytics. Rethinking your lead generation strategy? Get in touch with our team to get the ball rolling.