While traditional acquisition methods, such as in-person sales calls and leveraging industry contacts often work best for B2B subscription sites, some smart online marketing tactics can be beneficial as well.That’s the attitude Datamyne has adopted, much to their advantage. As we show in this week’s Case Study on Datamyne on Subscription Site Insider, the B2B subscription database has a strong in-house sales staff. But it’s also employed an online chat feature, which Lisa Wallerstein, VP of Marketing & Product Development, told us has risen in popularity among prospects and clients.”People prefer online chat to calling,” she said, “especially when they need help running a search.”The reason is obvious — asking questions and getting real-time answers to your questions is far easier for consumers than using two media at once.But it’s also because Datamyne staffs its chat feature with a real-life customer care team (whose photos and contact information it posts on the site — a nice change from companies who seem to think that only the executive team are worthy of public recognition). The four-person Acocunt Care team, as Datamyne calls them, monitors online chat requests from 8am to 8pm EST (in order to accommodate the West Coast workday), but will respond via their smartphones on off hours if there’s an amergency.Thus, the online chat serves as both a lead generation and retention device. And with retention rates varying from 80% to 95%, Datamyne is obviously doing something right.