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The mailing list (a.k.a. database) is one of the most important fundamentals in a direct mail marketing campaign. The ones in the list are the people whom you’ll send your mails to in the hope of making some business with them. You have to bear in mind that your list is more than just a collection of names. It is one of the most important things that you need to have for a successful direct mail marketing campaign because sending the right message to the right person would surely generate sales sooner or later. Fundamentals of a Good Mailing List - Your audience should match your product or services.
- Your list should be as current as possible.
- It should be tightly focused (age group, location, etc.).
- It should be easy to validate, update and manage (electronic format).
Your contact database is your door to make connections to your target audience. So, try to spend more time and be more meticulous in gathering the list. Ask these questions before you finalize everything: Are these data current? Am I giving focus to the right people? Is this list specific or too broad? Should I need to segment this list into different categories? Segmenting Your Database When you try to segment your list, everything will be more specific. You will have an idea who you are writing to and what do those people have in common. If you’ve segmented properly, you can be mailing to the right people. Common ways to segment a list include: - Potential customers vs. current or past customers
- Grouping past customers by purchase history
- Organizing by location, income level, age group, or other criteria
In order to get the attention of your prospect client you should make your message more relevant and should be inline with the trend today. It really takes a lot of time and effort in categorizing your mailing list into tighter groups but is necessary so that when you write your mails, it can become more personalized and it can make you establish more connections towards your prospect clients. Where to Find a List There are ways on how to start your database for the direct mailing campaign. You can start researching and build your own database or you can purchase it from brokers or data services. Option 1-- Building your Own Database: If you make your own list, this requires a lot of work from you, but your consolation is, the list that you’ll be gathering will be more reliable and well targeted. Be sure that in order to avoid future problems, your list should be built using common software application like Excel or Act. This will allow your list to be exported into a format that a mail vendor might require like CSV (comma-separated values) for example. These programs also are very simple to maintain. Option 2—Purchasing Data from a Data Company: If you buy a list, for sure there wouldn’t be any effort needed on your part but of course you need to pay for such convenience. When you use a data company, you can have a lot of demographic choices. You can choose the location, household size, or the income level of your target audience and you can have those data in a matter of few clicks. Well, the pay for the list will be around $200 to $2,000, depending on the number of clients and specifications that you need. Common Threads If you want to be very sure with the reliability of your direct mail marketing list and you don’t trust anybody to do it perfectly for you, you can choose option 1. If you are the kind of merchant who doesn’t have the luxury of time to do the research yourself, you can try option 2. Whatever option you might take, just see to it that your list has the 3 essentials namely: relevance, accuracy, and currency. - Relevance – Your list should include the people who would most likely buy your products or avail of the services you’re offering. If you are selling luxury products, don’t send your posts to lower-income neighborhoods.
- Accuracy – Reputable data companies usually verify the names and addresses in their databases twice or even thrice to ensure that these people still exist or are still living in the addresses stated. This reduces the chances of mails not delivered or wasted postage.
- Currency – In this modern world, people are pretty mobile. It’s now common for them to move and change postal addresses. New neighborhoods also arise more than before and streets get renamed more than usual, etc. So, before purchasing, be sure that the list is not an old one. Make sure that the database that you have is fresh for you not to waste your money with an old useless database and also waste your money sending direct mails that wouldn’t be received by your target clients.
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