How to Mail the Right List.

The more you know and can tell me who your best customers are, the better research I can do to help you

mail the right list.

Consider these questions:

For mailings to consumers:

What age range do your customers fall into?

Do they tend to be male or female, or doesn’t it matter?

Do they live in apartments, condos or homes or doesn’t it matter?

What regions, states or towns to they tend to live in, or is there a radius around a certain zip code? An

example would be a chain of retail sores that wanted to mail to consumers that lived within 5 miles of each store.)

Are there any areas where you know they don’t live or you don’t want to mail to? (An example would be areas

damaged by hurricanes etc.)

What is their typical income?

Is your offer geared to a certain credit score? (Access to individual credit data is controlled by law.)

Are they married or single; do they have kids or doesn’t it matter?

Are there certain types of careers that they have?

Do they have common hobbies or interests?

What problem do they have that you can solve?

What are your competitors doing to address this market?

For mailing to business.

What is the typical company size in terms of employees and sales volume?

Is there a certain job function you want to reach?

Are there regions of the country, states or towns to be selected, or area codes, or a radius around a zip code?

Are there SIC codes?

Are you interested in new businesses, credit rating, number of business phone lines, or other attributes?

How are your competitors reaching this market now?

Although the right mailing list is one of the key elements to the success of your program, so is the attractiveness of the package, the graphics, the copywriting and your offer.

How the right list can fail.

I happen to play percussion and have sought out places where I get great advice and save a lot of money on new gear Because I subscribe to drumming magazines and these lists are available to rent, I got a colorful direct mail piece advertising educational videos. The mailer figured that because I subscribe to these magazines, I’m a perfect person to send the mailing to. They were right, but the mailing was wrong.

The problem was the offer; each product was at strict retail plus shipping and the stores that I buy from all offer a substantial discount. Because I subscribe to these magazines, the publisher knew I am an active buyer, but they didn’t think through the process to understand that a subscriber is also going to be educated enough to buy at a sharper price than retail. Always think through your offer so you don’t send the wrong offer to the right audience.

There is an old story about the client who told the advertising agency that they didn’t want to do direct mail because direct mail didn’t work. So the advertising agency proposed a piece where the headline read “Who Says There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch” and the copy explained that all the person had to do was respond and they would get $5.00 in cash for a free lunch. Of course the immediately panicked because they didn’t want to give out thousands of dollars!

So the adverting agency’s point was that direct mail works, it was just that this mailer’s previous offers did not.

How your message is crafted to have meaningful impact and motivate your reader to action is called “writing copy.” You can write your own, or hire a pro. And we have sources to help you either way. Both ways will involve a learning curve and both ways have their own advantages and challenges.