It’s that time again. Christmas represents a boost in business for almost all industries. So you’re probably working through your Christmas campaigns right now.

But, there’s a segment of your customer base that you might have ignored: old leads that have gone cold.

Your database of cold leads represents a huge potential boost to the productivity of your Christmas campaigns.

Why You Should Re-Engage Your Old Leads

Here’s a quick story to show the value of restarting conversations with old leads.

A real estate agent had 5,000 old leads that had gone snowy cold. These leads were in a two-year-old database.

The agent decided to reach out to these old leads one by one.

What happened?

Within 16 days, she’d reeled in a $12,000 commission. Within two years, her volume went from $30 million to almost $70 million.

There was about $40 million wrapped up in those old leads.

You may not have $40 million worth of old leads in your databases. But, re-engaging leads that have gone cold adds a ton of potential buyers to your Christmas campaigns list.

The best part about re-engaging old leads is that you’ve already put time into them and paid some of the customer acquisition cost. So your margin for each sale that comes from your old lists will be even better.

However, there’s a challenge to overcome. People move, change their addresses, and get new emails.

Chances are, you’re going to reach out to the wrong people if you send correspondence to leads that you haven’t contacted in months or years.

Databases need to be updated constantly. But old databases can be especially naughty when it comes to outdated info.

How to Update Your Old Lead Data

Once you’ve got your cold leads gathered together, you need to update the data.

When you’re reaching out to cold leads, it’s best to contact them through just one communication channel. If someone hasn’t heard from you in months, it will be a bit jarring to get a Christmas card, an email, and a text message. That’s too much outreach.

So choose just one method of communication for cold lead outreach.

There are benefits to each method.

If you email your cold leads, it’s much easier to add them to your email program. Just be sure that you never email people who have unsubscribed from your mailing list.

Text messages are almost guaranteed to be opened and read. However, you’ll need to include an offer or a promotion to incentivize clicking a link or engaging with you.

A mailed card fits in well with the other Christmas mail people get. But it can be tricky to track the performance of a mailer.

Whichever method you choose, you’ll need to update that piece of information in your contacts.

The easiest way to do this is with a batch append tool.

Start by removing the piece of data that you want updated from each entry on your list. For example, if you’re emailing your cold leads, you’d remove the email address from each contact.

Then the batch append tool will find the most current email address and add it to the list.

You’ll get the best results if you have at least two pieces of information about each contact. So, if you’re getting email addresses, it’s best to have a list of names with addresses or names with phone numbers.

The less complete your contacts are, the greater the chance of false positives.

Once you’ve got the lists prepared, simply upload it for processing. The batch processing service will return a list with the information you need added.

Some batch processing services offer APIs. So if you’ve got in-house applications or third-party software that allows custom API integration, you can automate this process and save yourself a sleigh load of time.

Now you have the most current data for reaching out to your cold leads this holiday season!

How to Reach Out to Your Old Leads

You’ve got your old leads database updated. All you need to do is add the updated info to your send lists and send them your Christmas campaign, right?

Not so fast. Remember that you haven’t talked to any of these people for quite a while. You’re going to need to reestablish contact.

In some cases—like ecommerce—this is as simple as creating an email campaign with an offer specifically for your cold leads.

In other industries, you may need a few conversations to revive the relationship and open a new conversation.

The moral of the story is that you’re going to need a specialized campaign or correspondence to glean some value from your old databases.

Treat these old leads as if they’re starting the customer journey all over again. Start by offering them value and rebuild the relationship.

The good news is that, since these are leads, you’ve got some customer profile information about them already. So it’ll be much easier to think of an an icebreaker to get things moving again.

With accurate data and a little cheer, you can give your Christmas campaigns a solid boost and start the new year off in high spirits.

To get started, grab some lists from your cold databases and check out the Searchbug batch processing tool, which will append and update missing and outdated information in your contact lists.