Article Sphere Logo

Mailing Lists - Keeping it Simple

By Expert Author: Anuj Bhagta | Article Abstract
Word Count: 594 words | Views: 52 view(s)
The right direct mailing list targets people who want your product or service.
The direct mail mailing list is a key factor in a successful direct mail marketing campaign and a major point to consider in small business marketing strategies where marketing ROI (Return On Investment) is a key concern.

What really makes your direct mail marketing and advertising campaign successful?

The biggest single factor in the success of your direct mail marketing strategy is who you send your mailings to.

A. You need a list.

This can be:

1) a list of existing customers or prospects who have inquired as a result of any of your marketing efforts or

2) a list which you purchase or in some cases obtain for free.

B. The mailing list must contain the names of people who are likely to be interested in the benefits of your products or services.

Don’t try and sell beer to the Temperance Society or real estate to people who cannot afford it. You have to target your direct mail marketing efforts.

What kinds of lists are available?

C. The three basic kinds of lists that you can use are (you can use all three):
1. Your own list of prospects and customers. This is a list that you collected with your own personal marketing efforts. This is known as a house list. These people are most likely to respond to your offers, because they have responded in the past.

2. A response list is a list of people that have actually done something. They have either purchased something from the people who put together the list or inquired in response to some offer or asked to be on the list. They have some level of interest in the topic or purpose of the list.

These people have not previously responded to you, but they have responded to someone in a related area (if you have purchased a correctly targeted list) so you know they are at least warm.

This is a direct mail mailing list you can purchase from the owner of the list (such as a magazine or company) or a list broker.

3. A compiled list is a list of people who were selected to be on the list because they possess the characteristics that you asked the list broker to screen for.

Examples of characteristics used to target correctly may include age, sex, geographic location, income level, etc. These are more fixed characteristics than response list characteristics, which are behavioral characteristics.

Case study: California based Sun Pacific Mortgage’s Forest Tardibuono found a great way to get the right direct mail mailing list for his company which has a very successful direct mail marketing strategy based on postcards and direct mail mailing lists.

“The title companies give us the mailing labels free. I’ll tell them we want all the homeowners in 95401 which is a zip we get most of our business from. So they’ll give us the mailing labels of anyone who is a homeowner from that lists. It saves money on labels and mailing lists.

They’ll even limit searches to specific categories such as all homeowners from that zip who got a loan from certain companies and they’ll do the search according to that so I can really target the public so that the mailing will be more effective.”

Mailing lists, correctly targeted, can make the difference in a mediocre promotional campaign to a wildly successful promotional campaign. It really just depends on what you are willing to have – success or mediocrity. So which is it?
Anuj Bhagta

About the Author/Author Bio

For More Free Resources visit http://www.freeearningtips.com

Article Source: http://www.articlesphere.com/Article/Mailing-Lists---Keeping-it-Simple/132690

Article Tags: mailing list

Article Submitted: 2008-03-26 | This Article has been viewed 52 times.

Rate Article

Related Videos

Enjoy Being Marketed To - Why?
How to Host Mailing List with Mailman
Learn Excel from MrExcel Episode 906 - Holiday Mail Merge
Inside Look at Action Comments Plug-in For Wordpress
Tech Update: New Tasks Feature in Gmail
 

More "Marketing Direct" Related Articles

 
 

Listed below are more articles related to the above article from the "Marketing Direct" article category.

People interested in the above article "Mailing Lists - Keeping it Simple" are also interested in the related articles listed below:

 
When it comes to marketing strategies often it is the simple ideas that are most overlooked and yet are the most effective things to do. Here are a few strategies that are easy to implement but can make an impact in your marketing efforts.
Do you own a small business? Are you struggling to get recurring business from your existing consumer base? If these are questions that you need an answer to the following 8 successful direct marketing methods may just transform your company and help you become a successful small business overnight.
Let's face it... everyone has inkjets, inserters, tabbers, laser printers, offset/web, etc. As a matter of fact, trying to offer these as an incentive to mailing customers would just get you some funny looks. Your clients would just say, “Of course you have those... you’re a mailhouse.” What NOT everyone has is CAMERA VERIFICATION! You might ask why you need this, especially if none of your customers have asked about it (believe me, if they aren‘t asking for it yet, they will be soon.
The natural tendency in uncertain economic times, and with the government announcing new plans and tactics every other day, is to cut back on all expenses for your business. Often businesses will cut back on their promotional expenditures, including direct mail campaigns. This is a big mistake.
If you are just starting out on direct mail marketing, you need to read up on a lot of marketing articles so that you can know at least on a conceptual level what direct mail marketing is all about. There are a lot of very informative and detailed marketing articles out there on the Internet that you can learn from. However, there is still no substitute to actually trying it for real. Marketing in real life is the best teacher you can hope for to instruct you in all the little nuances that reading cannot teach.
There’s more to designing your direct mail than a great layout and enticing content. No matter who designed your ad for you, it all boils down to one thing – if it gets opened and read. And it all depends on the envelope printing that came with it.
SMS Marketing is growing as best method of marketing world widely. SMS marketing is first time available in market in 1996 and now this is one of easiest way to connect with people. In SMS marketing, bulks of numbers are gathered to send a message to all of them. This all done by automated software and anyone can get them from internet.
 
Article Directory Home All Categories Business Marketing Direct
 

Can't find what you're looking for? Try Google Search!
 
Copyright © 2005 - by Larry Lim, Singapore - Article Search Engine Directory at ArticleSphere.com™
All Rights Reserved Worldwide. All Trademarks and Servicemarks are the property of the respective owners.

Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish German English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italiano Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Dutch Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish