I bought a mailing list of businesses and sent an expensive mailing.  Based on the list I had expected a big response from the mailing. 

Taking into account 3-4 days for the mail to arrive and a weekend.  I waited for the phone to ring……but it was quiet. I know I’m not the only one to have these results.  But I did learn something from this and it was time to start over and begin to create a new list.

My 5 Steps to a better mailing list:

1. Who are our best customers?
We went back to our existing customer list and reviewed which customers we like to work with and what type of businesses they run. 

2. Surveyed our customers.
We called our good clients and asked what did they like about us and how can we improve our relationship with them.

This was time consuming but WOW did we learn a lot!  They liked our products and quality of services.  They wanted us to be in touch with them more often.  They wanted to know about other products and services we offer to enhance their business.  There are services and products they either didn’t remember or knew we provided.

3. Fine tuned my list characteristics.
Based on our survey, we went back to review the list I bought.  It wasn’t really a good list after all because many of the contacts were too big a business for our products and services.  Many were not even the type of business that fit our products and services.

4. Ordering the list.
Next time I ordered a list I didn’t go to a general list company. I went to a list broker and gave them my characteristics for a good client.  My list was smaller than the generic list I had originally purchased.  I also discovered that there were many on the list that did not show up on the generic list I originally purchased.

5. Segmenting the mailing to the list.
We broke down the list and customized the letter and offer for each industry.  My letters were different for each industry or product I wanted to talk about.

This time we received phone calls from different contacts on the list about our services.  Based on our investment of time and money the second time around we made money and actually gained clients that are coming back to us for more advice and services.

The mailing list is only part one to growing your business.  Although it worked for us, it isn’t the only component to a successful direct mail campaign.  The message you send and its frequency are just as important and critical to your success. 

If we can be of any assistance to you acquiring a new prospect mailing list please call us at 508-226-4565.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Direct Mail, Mailing List, Marketing, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.