Mailing Lists

WHO you mail to is THE most important part of a direct mail program. Remember, one of the advantages of direct mail is that it is highly targetable. If you can identify the key characteristics of your current customers, you can easily find new prospects who are just like them. There are three primary methods for consumer targeting.

Geographic Targeting

This is the simplest and least expensive list to acquire. If customers live or work close to a store, then they are a prospect. This type of targeting works well for small businesses where the convenience of location is a powerful magnet and everyone in the area has a need for your service. Direct marketing based on geography works best if you have a limited number of stores that are convenient to certain areas of town.

Demographic & Psychographic Targeting

This type of targeting is based on the principle that “birds of a feather flock together”. In other words, if you know what kind of people are your current customers, you can easily find others like them.

Demographics

The criteria used with these types of lists are statements of facts about a person, such as age, income, home value, presence of children etc. They are derived from various public records and census data. Demographic data is probably the most common targeting mechanism, and is readily available from most consumer list brokers, and is reasonably priced.

Psychographics

This type of list defines people’s lifestyles and what they like to do. It is as much an art as a science. It could include criteria for people who are golfers, tennis players, like sports cars, go to theater or prefer sporting events. There are only a few companies that specialize in psychographic profiling. These lists are more expensive than the two previous types and should be used only when you have a fairly sophisticated understanding of your target market.

House List

This last type of list is not one that you buy, but is a list of names and addresses that a company has compiled from inquiries, orders or acquisitions. It’s a list of their customers and prospects that they’ve maintained in-house.

Remember that it costs five times as much to make a sale to a stranger than it does to a customer, so developing and maintaining a relationship with prospects makes them customers waiting to be born.

Technical Issues

Once you have found the perfect list of prospects, be sure to use good list hygiene. Our population is highly mobile, so we use the National Change of Address (NCOA) service to be sure your mail goes to the right place. We also add barcodes and other endorsements that help the Post Office handle your mail efficiently through automation. We’ll check for duplicate names and addresses. Finally, we’ll presort your list to take advantage of postal rate discounts.

Mailing List Specs

When preparing your mailing lists for upload, keep these points in mind:
Your mailing list may be in the form of a table or a comma delimited list.
Your mailing list must contain a header record containing minimum of following fields:

• Contact's Full Name in one field or First and Last Name in two separate fields
• Street Address
• Suite, Apt # (if applicable)
• City, State, Zip Code
• Country-(for non US addresses)
• Header fields identify each element of your address records. The header record must be the first record in your table/list.

Exporting a Mailing List:

FROM OUTLOOK

• On the File menu, click Import and Export to export the new contacts folder.
  Click Export to a file.
• Select "Export to a File" from the list of action options. Click "Next"
• Select "Comma Separated Values" (DOS) from the file type. Click "Next"
• Type a name for the exported file, and then click OK.
• Click Finish.