As a search-engine fueled by long-tail organic search engine traffic – i.e. latestage training buyers who are finding exactly what they’re interested in buying – we don’t hear many complaints about the quality of leads we deliver to training providers.
However, we have picked up on a trend. Many sales teams don’t care for leads from training buyers without corporate domains in their email address and some even have policies to not contact those leads in fear of wasting time. We decided to explore the value of personal email addresses left on training enquiries and share the following to help you better decide whether these enquiries are valuable to you:
Personal Emails do not Indicate Lack of Profession
Did you know that 84% of personal email addresses used to contact training providers on findcourses.co.uk are connected to a LinkedIn account?
Unsurprisingly, the demographics of LinkedIn account-holders skew towards university-educated, decision-makers aged 30-49, an audience that may not be far off from your training buyer profile.
Why do Training Buyers Leave Their Personal Email Addresses?
Looking deeper into the data through interviews with training buyers and suppliers, personal email addresses tend to follow one of three paths: 1) an individual buyer who isn’t currently employed, 2) an individual buyer who is not comfortable leaving a work email address as they will be self-funding the training and might be interested in changing companies, or 3) a high level training buyer who is skittish to reveal the size of their company in worry that it will be flagged for additional marketing and sales while they’re still in an exploratory phase. In any case, a personal email address – though irritating for your sales team that will be displeased to qualify the lead in the short term – has some great long-term benefits.
Long-term Value for Your Database
People change jobs, but they rarely change personal email addresses. If you receive a high level of “soft-bounces” to your emails as response to your marketing emails, how many of those are messages stating the individual has left the company? Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to find and reconnect with them at their new company?
A personal email address is held for 10 years or longer by 51% of people in the United Kingdom according to a report by the Data & Marketing Association.
Although data on job tenure is not collected nationally in the UK, many people approximate the country’s average job tenure to that of the United States, which
is 4.6 years.
Target Your Audience More Accurately on Social Media Platforms
One final advantage to receiving personal email addresses is that you can transform your targeted audience on social media. If you would prefer to prioritise your social media marketing budget to reach the individuals who have previously been in contact with you and will recognise your brand, personal email addresses are the key. These personal email addresses are connected to social media platforms far more often than corporate domains. In our experience, approximately 80% of personal email addresses sent through
information requests to training providers are connected to Facebook accounts, while only 5% of email addresses with a corporate domain are linked to profiles. It is important to note that this will likely vary by training category.
