Content Matters

NetProspex, a sales intelligence startup, has just released a suite of free email marketing tools called the Sales Lead Toolkit.
The Toolkit consists of four apps:

• Email pattern lookup: trying to figure out the email pattern for a prospect? NetProspex uses their database of corporate email addresses to suggest the right pattern (e.g. [email protected] or [email protected], etc)
• Email checker - most commecial email packages have this capability, but it's great to have a free web-based app where you can validate whether an email address is accepted by the email system.
• Lead by URL - just enter a URL and it provides you with a list of contacts which you can download/purchase.
• Custom search - by geographic region, job function, industry, etc.

NetProspex, founded in 2006 and run by former ZoomInfo president Gary Halliwell, is a fairly new entrant into the competitive prospecting and sales intelligence space.  Their approach seems to be a cross between the ZoomInfo and Jigsaw models. They claim 2.5 million contacts at 350,000 companies. The basic business model is a subscription model, though they are employing a Jigsaw-like offering where users can upload their own contacts in return for new ones.

I took a quick test run of the new tools. In a small and unscientific study, I found the data to be fairly accurate. Looking at the profile for Alacra, NetProspex had 12 contacts, as compared to nine on ZoomInfo.  Of the 12, there were a couple of good contacts that I would not have expected them to have and only one that appeared to be in error. They also incorrectly listed a few of our London contacts as based in New York, but that's a minor quibble.

The new Toolkit is a smart idea.  The lookups are limited to ten per day, so it's a freemium approach where they can show off their capabilities in hopes of getting users hooked so they subscribe. I've long been a fan of freemium, especially with products like this where power users will easily exceed the free version, but occasional users will bookmark it and come back for more.

The Toolkit is available on the NetProspex website.