What’s cold data? Cold data is the contact details of the type of business owners you’d like to work with but don’t have a relationship with yet. A great way to grow your consultancy is via ‘outreach campaigns’ to cold data – encouraging them to opt into your email marketing list where you can more easily build a relationship with them.

Growing a business and developing a massive email list of ‘opted in’ prospects can, from the outside, seem like some form of alchemy.

But you can make magic happen when you get it right. As a big email list of ‘opted in’ prospects means a stable and consistent source of future clients.

Put off by the idea of cold data? Don’t be. A list is just a way of capturing hundreds of potential opportunities. This list could contain details of other professionals that you will go on to do your best and most rewarding work with.

It’s what you do with the data that counts.

The most scalable way to grow your HR consultancy is by: 

• Building your email marketing list
• Building a relationship with that list
• Commercialising the relationship with that list

To turn cold data into a marketing list, you will need to have something of value to offer them. We call this a lead magnet.

This can either be an educational guide, checklist, or book like mine “Firing People Doesn’t Grow Your HR Consultancy”.

The next step is to contact cold data and get them to request the lead magnet by completing a web form, giving you their details and joining your email marketing list.

People who take this action will be way more engaged with your future marketing than anyone else in the world. Which is why building a list of ‘opted in’ contacts is so important. Because it is a type of self-qualification.

When building a list, it’s a good idea to develop it consciously. If you only add the types of contact that you are planning to work with, then you dramatically improve the quality of your cold data from the get-go.

• Focus on very specific business types
• Understand exactly what that business looks like (turnover, employee number etc)
• Be clear with what data you want and how much data you need 

By this stage, you’ll know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and who you’re looking for. The next step is to decide how you’re going to do it. There are a few options that we’ll look at:

There are list building companies that you can reach out to- they will pull together cold data that fits your spec.

It is an expensive option but, it can make a difference in the long run. Selectabase is one such company.

A data company should be compliant with the legislation that surrounds data and GDPR. Selectabase also have some great free tools you can take a look at – these can help you get up to speed with how the process works and how you can make it work to your advantage. There Postcode Radius Tool is worth a look.

You may have used a freelancer site before. They’re simple to use and it can help connect you with a reliable freelancer that you use over and over again. It can be a cost-effective way of getting your data – it also means that your freelancer can be working away while you get on with the day job – but, you will get what you pay for.

Freelancing sites – People Per Hour is a UK-based platform while Fiverr has migrated across from the US – work best when you are very clear about what you’re looking for and can take the time to work through the replies that you will get. What’s really great about sites like these is that you can tap into some really skilled and knowledgeable freelancers that can add value to your process – you just might have to look hard for them.

It is easier and less technical than it sounds and we use some pretty cool software to get the work done for you.

We scrape Google using the Google My Business listing category the business sets when creating their account, so you can be sure that you’re getting the data you want.

We then suggest you use a tool like Hunter to get the publicly available email address for the businesses that we have scraped.

We’ve made this option for you the most affordable and the best way to get rich, quality cold data that will help you with your HR consultancy’s lead generation.

For more information about this, please send me an email or book a short call with my via my online diary link.