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Four Reasons Why I F*cking Love Jigsaw
By crooky | April 23, 2008
I have recently started using a new research tool - Jigsaw. Jigsaw is essentially a DIY contact list builders. Before Jigsaw, if you wanted to pull together a list of say… Business Analysts in North America, you would either have to try and dig up those contacts using a clever combination of Google and LinkedIn plus 100s of wasted hours OR you could find a BA magazine and rent their subscriber list for an exhorbitant fee. Jigsaw is not only cost effective but it’s a better option in many regards.
I want to note here that I got to this party a little late. Jigsaw has been around since 2003 and while I was an early adopter of other platforms such as LinkedIn, I did not get on the Jigsaw train until this year.
1. Bad data
When you buy a list from someone, there’s always a percentage of bad data in the database. Let’s face it, most databases are complete garbage after about a year. People change jobs, companies go under, etc… When you rent a list from someone, there are typically no guarantees as to the quality. It’s “buyer beware”. As much as 20% of that list might be shit.
Jigsaw is no different in terms of list quality - there is bad data in some places in Jigsaw. I can’t really think of a way to avoid having shit data in a contacts database that doesn’t involve magic. However, Jigsaw will credit your account for every bad contact. How sweet is that? So that means if I buy a list of 1500 BAs and 300 of them bounce back when I try to mail them, I just go into my Jigsaw account, note which ones were bad and I get credits that I can then use to buy new contacts that hopefully won’t be bad. If they are bad - REFUND!
2. Filtering
The filtering options that you have with a list bought from a publication or other source of that type are very limited. They’ll say “you can filter by state, by NAICS code and by company size” or something to that effect.
With Jigsaw, I get to preview every single contact. For example, if I want to buy a list of VP Marketing folks, I use the List Builder tool (see below) and it lets me filter by all kinds of fields:
Once I have a sample I like, I can go in and manually filter it to exclude companies I don’t want on the list and many other things.
3. Ownership
The nice thing about getting a list from Jigsaw is that once you buy it, it’s yours. You get it as a downloadable file that you can use as many times as you want. This is in comparison to list renting where the list owner has a lot more control over how you use the list.
4. Cost
You can buy a list of contacts from Jigsaw for about $1/contact. That sounds like a lot but when I did the math on what it would take me to generate these names myself, I was coming in at around $5/contact. That’s assuming I could dig up as many contacts as I need for the research.
I can’t give you a quote on what a comparable list from a publishing house would be worth but I can guarantee you - it would be a lot more. I’ve seen a one-time rental for a 3000 contact list go for $9000 and up.
So in a nutshell, I love Jigsaw. Try it! You might like it.
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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.
Topics: Research Methodologies |
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April 24th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Thank’s Crooky! Glad we could help, thanks for the metion!
April 24th, 2008 at 8:26 am
No problem. Dan Dwyer is my account manager. He was very helpful and deserves a raise.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:55 am
do you really need to use profanities in this article? very very unprofessional…. maybe not for a 25 year old.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Well Moe,
I’m sorry if I’ve offended your delicate sensibilities. It’s unfortunate that you judge me by the way I choose to express myself but I think I can rest easy without your approval.
However, I’m not 25 and my business is booming despite the fact that I use the odd profanity. My work speaks for itself.
My business is an unbridled expression of me. I’m not the most polished guy in the world (and I don’t need to be) but I’m extremely open and honest with my clients (something most people cannot claim) and I have excellent relationships with my clients (most of them are repeat customers). What you see with me is what you get. How many people can you say that about?
Speaking of unprofessional, what did you hope to achieve by chiding me publicly like this?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:56 am
I agree with Moe and I am surprised that Jigsaw would allow the post. Linkedin would not allow this garbage.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Come on…really? People are objecting to Crooky swearing on his own blog? It’s not like this is a 20-foot billboard next to an elementary school.
If I had to guess, I’d say that Moe is banking on sustaining a professional career by using professionalism as a surrogate for intelligence.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I recently created an account on Jigsaw for my employer and he can’t stop ranting about how much he loves it. As for the profanity, I guess when something is that good it is commonplace to express ones enthusiasm with a little “dirt in the air” so to speak. If you won a million dollars would you not feel the urge to roll in it, play with it and “make it rain”. It is obvious to those familiar with today’s generation of expression that the title is just that. Thank you Crooky, I dig ya.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Thanks for the support guys. Just to remind anyone else who has concerns about my relationship with Jigsaw - this wasn’t a paid review. It was unsolicited and they didn’t know about it until after I posted it.