Could anyone give me some general advice on what to ask for when evaluating a new data source? What kind of questions can I ask so it sounds like I'm an experienced guy? How to talk them down to get it cheaper? Here's what I got so far... 1. Age of data 2. Cleaned/not cleaned with IW 3. # of fields so it is compliant 4. # of records 5. Country/general overview of sources 6. Niche if applicable Thanks in advance for any advice you all can give. I VERY much appreciate the time to help me/others out.
This is tough if they don't either know you or of you from someone they already do business with, but I'll say you need to get a small test amount to really have any idea. Depends on who the source is, but getting a better price doesn't always help if they give you crap data because u paid less, and age / scrubbed questions are also too easy to bs. I'd just advice to be straight with them that you need a long term source, want a small test set to start with and if it sucks they won't hear from you again, and then listen for their reaction and make your judgement. If they seem a bit shady and you still want to give it a shot, you tell them the price for the sample and that you guys can come up with something better after you see how it goes.
Thanks again for the advice brother. What's the consensus on live feeds as far as general price/quality and how it compares to other options?
Don't ask, test! Get a sample of the data and run it through a service like ours (LeadSpend) to identify what % of the data is invalid. If the % is high, then you should expect the data to be fairly old. Mailing to it will result in a lot of hard bounces and very likely spam traps.