Mailing List Purchase Tips

EXPLAIN YOUR PRODUCT / SERVICE TO THE LIST SPECIALISTS

The more the list specialist knows about your product/service the more likely the list specialist can recommend mailing list segments and mailing list strategies that you’ve not considered. In fact most specialists have probably seen a similar product, thus knows from experience what type of lists and strategies have worked in the past.

USE A MAILING LIST SPECIALIST

Almost all printers, letter shops, and on-line full service print shops offer mailing lists, BUT note that their primary business is not mailing lists … but printing and labeling. Often the person assigned to your account knows everything about printing and postage … BUT little about mailing lists. Bottom-line, the mailing list is THE most important element of your direct mail campaign; getting the lowest postage rate will not give success if the low postage rate pieces go to the wrong people. So be sure you’re dealing with a mailing list specialist when selecting your mailing list.

AVOID REDUNDANT MAILING LIST QUALIFIERS

One way to keep your mailing list affordable is to avoid redundant mailing list qualifiers … since each mailing list qualifier has a cost. For example, pulling a mailing list by home value, purchase price, and home equity is over-kill and expensive; ordering a mailing list with the “net worth” qualifier would achieve the same objective … since net worth is influenced by home value, purchase price, and home equity. Our mailing list specialist will offer suggestions on this issue as you begin to select your mailing list.

PREVIOUS ORDER SUPPRESSIONS

When selecting your residential mailing list you’ve the option to suppress names that you’ve previously ordered. Your business mailing lists quantity may be 100,000, but of course you may not want to mail all at once. Here you’ve the option of doing a direct mailing to 10,000, and then returning a month or year later to mail more … while suppressing the names you previously mailed.

RANDOM SAMPLE TESTING

When your mailing list quantity is more than you need, then simply pull a random sample. By random sample we mean the mailing list we give you will be evenly distributed among all geographic areas and demographics.

CONSIDER TERTIARY MAILING LISTS

When ordering a mailing list consider finding and testing tertiary categories. For example, if you sell restaurant supplies to restaurants … considering mailing (testing) a few names to business offices that have cafeterias. If you’re targeting golfers then consider mailing a few names to business sales managers … a group with a high propensity to play golf. This is one area our mailing list specialist can help – our recommendation may result in a new revenue source.

BACK-END ANALYSIS

Order a mailing list from us … mail the list … and then send us the responders, and we’ll generate a free back-end analysis report … showing which mailing segments (geography, age, income, business type, etc) generated the best response.

GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

Geography can have a significant impact on direct mail response, so to help you optimally select your mailing list we offer you a free Geographic Analysis. This analysis will help you determine the prime geographic areas to mail.

CUSTOMER FILE SUPPRESSION

Of course it’s not wise to do a direct mailing to households / businesses that already exist on your in-house file, so here we offer you the option of deleting names that you already have … from the mailing list that we provide you.

GEOGRAPHIC RADIUS

As an alternative to cherry picking zip codes, you may simply ask that we pull a radius around your location. For example, a restaurant marketer could do a direct mailing to all frequent diners within a 3 mile radius of the restaurant.

CUSTOM DELIVERY TITLES

When doing a direct mailing to businesses, “custom delivery titles/Attn Lines” offer an effective way to get your direct mail piece to the right decision maker or reader audience. Not sure which delivery title is best? Just ask one of our direct mail specialists … since in the past 25 years we’ve seen and measured many direct mail titles. For example, here are just a few:
*ATTN: OFFICE SUPPLY BUYER
*ATTN: MAINTENANCE DEPT
*ATTN: HEALTHCARE COORDINATOR
*FOR TEACHER’S LOUNGE
*FOR DOCTOR’S WAITING ROOM

BE SPECIFIC OF WHAT YOU WANT

Let’s say you want an insurance mailing list. Do you want all agencies or just those that provide life insurance? Do you want insurance agencies or agents? Do you want to include branches and franchises … or just independent single-location operations? Let’s say you want a mailing list of the very affluent. Do you want all age groups … young twenty-something millionaires and 85 year retirees? Do you want millionaires that are real estate investors vs millionaires that rarely invest and travel?