Some Telemarketing Lists Are Garbage. Here’s How to Check

In theory, telemarketing lists are great. Pay for a spreadsheet full of leads instead of doing the insanely labor-intensive work of getting that information yourself.

Any decent call center dialer enables a rep to have a hundred conversations a day, sometimes much more. Keeping a hungry rep busy full-time is going to require thousands of leads. For a team, you need an even longer telemarketing list to draw from.

List-building is hard. And yes, I know about all the Google Maps scrapers and AI lead-gen tools out there. Some are amazing, but building a list of contacts that is actually going to help a sales team make money still takes a high-degree of human involvement. I have paid people $5k per month (sometimes much more) for list-builder roles.

So the prospect of a telemarketing list that has all that research and verification done ahead of time is really attractive. I understand how buying business leads works, and the labor that goes into creating these lists.

$25k for a telemarketing list? If the volume and quality of leads is good, that price can easily pencil out for me.

But the list has to be good. It has to be full of fresh, relevant contacts, and free of potential legal exposure for my agents and organization.

The truth is that not every telemarketing list hits these requirements. Even a good list that has aged or been recycled is going to cause problems.

The risks of buying low-quality telemarketing lists

Buying low-quality telemarketing lists just isn’t worth it. There are too many serious risks if you accidentally use a bad one:

• Wasted resources: The information on these lists often isn’t worth what you pay for them, and you can spend a lot of money on outdated, useless information.
• Unproductive outreach: If your agents are spending all their time calling numbers that are out of service or irrelevant for your needs, that’s time they’re not spending calling actual leads or customers.
• A negative impact on your business’s reputation: Everyone hates spam calls, and that’s exactly what your company’s calls will feel like if you work from a bad list. The risk to your reputation just isn’t worth it.

Even the best cold call script in the world won’t help a rep who is calling a list of dead leads. A low-quality list puts reps in a no-win situation and can easily lead to call center burnout.

Using a bad list also comes with a number of legal and financial risks. These lists often have numbers that are on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry, and if you call one of these numbers, your company can be held liable for up to $50,120 per call.

That’s right. Over $50,000 for one phone call.

This is true even if you make the call using an outbound dialer, so you need to be super cautious about who you’re calling.

If you continually call numbers on the DNC registry, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can also sue your business.

Signs of a garbage telemarketing list

So how do you know if you’ve got your hands on a bad list? Here are some signs.

• Incomplete or inconsistent contact information: If the list is missing data or has inconsistently formatted entries, it’s likely to be a bad list. This isn’t always true, but it’s not a great sign, and can create issues or extra work when you import/export the list.
• Outdated info: Sometimes you can find a timestamp that indicates the data is old. Often you will find addresses of stores that have moved locations, people who have switched employers, and other details that can clue you into when the list was built.
• High bounce rates: All lists are going to have some level of bounce rate, but if the list you’re looking at has a bounce rate over 10%, you shouldn’t buy it.
• Low response rates: Similarly, if the list you’re looking at has lower than average response rates, leave it alone. Anything lower than 10% is a red flag.
• Duplicate entries: This is a sign that the list hasn’t been reviewed or cleaned in a long time, if at all, and is likely of lower quality. Be on the lookout for names that might not immediately appear to be duplicates. For instance, it may include the same contact with their middle name in one entry and without it in another.
• Irrelevant or unqualified contacts: Some people go into the process of buying telemarketing lists thinking that any batch of contacts is better than no contacts, but this isn’t true. If the list you’re looking at has a bunch of people who have never indicated any interest in your industry or company, leave it alone.
• Poor data sources: The quality of data sourcing varies widely from company to company, so do some digging and see if you can find out where your prospective list’s data comes from. The better ones have data from verifiable sources, like networking platforms, business websites, and utility lists. The lists you don’t want either won’t list their data sources at all, or just list vague, unverifiable sources.
• Lack of segmentation: Low quality telemarketing lists are a free for all — anybody’s contact info can be on them, regardless of who they are and what they’re interested in. Avoid any lists that don’t allow for customer segmentation. Any good vendor in this space is going to give you tools to make sure that your list is populated with contacts that fit your industry. For instance, if you’re fundraising for a nonprofit, a good vendor would allow for segmentation based on previous donation activity.

Now, admittedly, this is all easier said than done.

The problem is, buyers often have to make a decision before they know exactly what they’re getting, since most sellers aren’t going to let you preview a list before you buy it. And even if they let you preview part of a list, there’s no guarantee that it’s representative of the quality you’ll get down the line.

So before anything else, look for red flags in your potential telemarketing list providers, including:

• Unrealistically low prices.
• No references or testimonials.
• Promises that seem too good to be true.
• Lack of transparency about data sources.

While there is little to no regulation in this field, you can often find reviews of companies that can give you more information as to the quality of their lists, and you can also look for any news or updates from the FTC about companies that have gotten on the bad side of the DNC registry.

How to verify the quality of telemarketing lists

Once you’ve marked the sketchy sellers off your list, look for the positive signs in the remaining contenders. Here’s how you can verify a telemarketing list’s quality:

• Transparency: If the company can’t explain to you how it collects its data in a way you can easily understand, don’t buy the list. You should also ask them about their consent practices and have a clear understanding of how it ensures everybody on the list actually wants to be on the list.
• Data security: Similarly, you should verify the vendor collects and stores data in compliance with security regulations. Information should be kept in as few places as possible, data should not be shared across unencrypted communications channels, and only people who actually need access to the data for a specific reason should have that access.
• Positive customer reviews: Look to see if the company has any reviews from businesses like yours. If possible, contact some of those businesses to hear more about their experience and results.
• Options for customization: This is a subtle but important one. Low quality lists tend to include all kinds of people from all kinds of demographics, without much thought to whether they’re relevant contacts or not. Higher quality lists will allow you to customize to meet your business’s needs, so you don’t get any irrelevant contacts.
• Price: Finally, the price for high-quality telemarketing lists is almost always going to be higher than that of low-quality lists. Remember, the higher the quality of the list, the more it’s going to cost upfront.

The importance of maintaining quality in telemarketing lists

Once you have a good list, you also need to make sure that it stays clean by following basic data hygiene practices. Always keep your list secure, and be careful with other people’s data. Don’t share information across non-encrypted means of communication, like text or email, and be mindful of who has access to the data.

You’ll also need to update your list regularly, reviewing the list for numbers that are no longer in service or simply not relevant to your company’s interests, and removing them from the list. Make sure you also update any outdated information. For instance, if someone has gotten married and changed their last name, be sure that’s reflected on your list.

While you’re doing this, also look for numbers that are on the DNC registry and remove them. You should check this regularly. The time it takes is well worth it if it potentially saves you from a $50,000 fine.

Maintaining the quality of your contact database is important for avoiding some very serious consequences, and the responsibility for keeping a clean contact list doesn’t end with purchasing a good list.

You need to do the ongoing work to keep your list clean and compliant. While this is going to take some extra work, it’s more than worth it in terms of protecting your reputation, avoiding potential legal consequences, and actually getting a positive return on your investment.

Telemarketing doesn’t have to be annoying — one of the best ways to ensure your organization doesn’t contribute to the problem is by using high-quality lists and keeping them up-to-date.