| |
| |
|
Marketing Information |
|
|
|
Mailing Lists - Keeping it Simple
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? Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998, her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2004 the company did close to $9 million in sales and employed over 60 people. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. Now she's sharing her marketing secrets with others. For more free marketing advice, visit her website at http://www.postcardmania.com
MORE RESOURCES:
Marketing - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Five Cheap Tricks for Promoting Your Business If you're like me, you're always looking for ways to promote your business - without spending a ton of money. Well, you're in luck. Marketing Smarter To Earn More An accountant once told me that he never met anyone who didn't want to make 30% more money. Whether you want a better lifestyle or to take more vacations, buy a fancy car, spend more time with your family, send your children to college or to give it all away, you could always use more money. Business Postcard Marketing: 35 Ways to Use It Postcards are an effective way for many business owners and marketing managers to attract new customers and increase sales from existing ones. Postcards are inexpensive to produce and mail. Rising Postal Rates? Don't Cut Down the Direct Mail The United States Post Office in the past had some trouble with its finances and their solution was to raise the postal rates. Whether or not you agree with this approach to trying to stay in business, like the weather and government in general, it's something you have to live with. Use a Guarantee In Your Headline To Increase Trust Sometimes you can use a guarantee effectively in your headline. Doing so often creates increased trust in the reader. Fundraising Renewal Letters: Four Goals to Strive For With Each One You Write In the fundraising profession, appeal letters that you mail to existing donors are called renewal letters. They are designed to solicit a gift, but, more important than that, they aim to persuade your current donors to renew their support of your organization. Eleven Reasons Donors Stop Responding To Fundraising Letter Appeals Donors will stop responding to your fundraising letter appeals for many reasons. Some of which you can manage, but many of which you cannot. Six Essential Principles for Marketing to Women Business Owners Marketing to women entrepreneurs is not difficult. You just have to follow six easy, but essential, principles. Cave Paintings, Baseball and Connecting There's no such thing as a captive audience--any of us can tune out at will. It may surprise you, then, to know that keeping people's attention in this high-tech age takes the same know-how we had in neolithic days. Profitable Marketing Programs (Part 1) Deciding whether a particular marketing program is profitable to your business is often more subjective than the accountants would have you believe. You should not only consider the direct revenue and costs associated with a marketing program, but you should also think about the long term impact on your business. Nice Guys Finish First Volunteering your services can be an excellent way to form new business relationships and raise your business's profile while lending a hand to a good cause. However, unless you take care, it can also become all-consuming, with little return (besides creating good karma). Good Vibes/ Bad Vibes Have you ever walked into a store or business and felt uncomfortable there for no apparent reason? Have you ever walked into a store all happy and left quite frustrated? Have you ever wished your house could feel happier? The process called energetic clearing can make a significant improvement to any location.There are many kinds of energy all around us. How To Be A First Class Marketer? Did you now how to follow up a new customer with less phone calls?First thing for you to know that you only have about 5 minutes for first follow up in the phone. The rest of that is a meeting arrangement. Off the Shelf Small Business Mapping Software All small businesses can benefit from inexpensive off the shelf CD Rom mapping software. If you own a business you need to where your customers are coming from, where you would like to expand your sphere of influence to, where your competitors are located and how to route your delivery vehicles. PowerPositioning: WillYouAcceptThisRose.com Positioning is a powerful concept in marketing. To illustrate, have you ever visited a fast food restaurant, and, in a rush to complete your order asked for a coke when you "perhaps" meant to order some other soft drink? The Coke brand and its owners have achieved a top of mind awareness. Marketing Tips - Ten Quick Marketing Actions It is often difficult to manage to do marketing tasks when you have a busy business or professional practice. Here are 10 ideas each of which take 5 or 10 minutes and can be done between appointments or when you take a break from working on a large project. Grab Your Audience by Focusing on Benefits Have you ever chosen to pay attention to someone just because they were so self-absorbed they didn't even know you were in the room? Of course not! We pay attention to people who take an interest in us. If we want our readers to pay attention to us, we better pay attention to them!The people we come in contact with through the course of our jobs are human beings with feelings, needs, wants, and desires. It Takes Two - How to Cultivate Profitable Alliances "Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition, with many benefits and cost savings." -Heidi Richards-More and more competition in the marketplace is making it necessary for companies to find creative ways to connect with customers and prospects, to enhance brand identity and attract top-notch employees. 5 Tips to Heat Up Your On-Line Marketing Using Off-Line Tactics The internet of course brings a huge arena of marketing opportunities for you. The ability to do business with people around the world has now been made readily available through a web site and email. The Greatest Business Tips are FREE The best way for someone to hang on to a tip is on a business card.Do you remember seeing the TV commercials of OSH Hardware stores, the ones where they give out time saving tips on things like squeaky floors and a host of other common household problems? The tips are well received and they are getting their name associated with "the answers are out there".
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
