Your prospect list reigns supreme in achieving success with every direct mail campaign. The most brilliant offer for lawn care services will fall flat on an apartment dweller. Believe us, it happens. Households without pets receive dog-supply catalogs. Single men receive women’s fashion catalogs. We like to call this “misdirected mail.” Mailers that miss the mark just haven’t done their homework.
There are simply thousands of mailing lists available to you, and the perfect prospecting list for your offer or campaign is among them. The challenge is finding the right list and selecting the proper segments to conduct smart, targeted marketing that reaches your ideal audience.
Keep these 3 points in mind when compiling and segmenting your mailing lists:
- Analyze your customer file — Take a look at the factors that can help you identify look-alike and act-alike audiences such as age, income, location, home ownership, presence of children, transactional behavior, and more.
- Evaluate response vs. compiled lists — For very specific product categories, evidence of recent purchases in that category is a strong predictor of success. Therefore, response lists (catalog buyers, magazine subscribers, etc.) can target individuals with proven interests and purchases in your product category. Where an offer is more general in nature, you can leverage lists in specific geographic areas that are targeted by the demographics that mirror your best customers.
- Get creative with niche lists — In addition to demographics and purchase behaviors, there are several other indicators that can help craft a successful direct marketing campaign. Try to identify niche lists for custom targeted mailings. For example, you can send “Welcome to the Neighborhood” offers to new movers who just bought homes in targeted ZIP codes.
Several lists may be worthy of your consideration, which is why you may want to test your lists and evaluate responses before mailing to entire segments. After the results come in, you can confidently roll out the campaign to the winning lists and segments.
In list acquisition, we cannot overstate the importance of experience. Our list acquisition specialists have seen it all from business-to-business, to direct-to-consumer, to specialty lists in every field — education, medical, financial, philanthropy, and more. As your full service direct marketing service provider, we can do the homework for you and recommend the best lists for your next campaign.
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