Grow Your Sales Without Busting Your Budget Using Targeted Mailing Lists

When it comes to an effective and affordable way to grow your business, targeted mailing lists rank highly - if you know how to use them effectively. Understanding how mailing list brokers assemble and price their mailing lists can help you understand how to get the most bang for your buck when you use mailing lists to grow your business.

General vs. Customized Mailing Lists

The cheapest mailing lists you can buy are general geographical mailing lists. These lists generally include all of the names and addresses in a geographic area. They're relatively easy to compile, but time-consuming and work intensive. You could compile your own or have an assistant do it, but it's far more cost effective to purchase the list compiled and ready to plug into your word processing or mailing software. You'll usually only pay pennies per name or number of names on the list, making them very affordable. A general mailing list may suit your purpose if your intention is to simply blanket an area with general ads or marketing materials in order to increase name recognition.

On the other hand, the response rate to general mailing lists is traditionally quite low - somewhere around 1%. In other words, you may get one response for every 100 pieces of direct mail you send out. If you're sending out an inexpensive direct mailer to test the waters for a new product, that response rate may be perfectly acceptable. If, on the other hand, you're sending out an expensive catalog or glossy mailer with a marketing incentive, you're going to want a higher response rate to make it worth your while.

That's where customized mailing lists come in. Mailing list brokers offer many ways to customize your purchased mailing lists, allowing you to only purchase names and addresses for those who are most likely to be in the market for your product. You can usually break out segments of a general mailing list by age, profession, marital status, income level or just about any other demographic. You can also customize a mailing list by life events - high school graduation, marriage, births, buying a new car, purchasing a home, to name just a few. With the right mailing list broker, you can even purchase names of people who have bought specific products in the past several months, or who have responded to advertisements for the type of service you provide.

These names are obviously more valuable, and require more work to compile, so you can expect to pay more for each name, and the more parameters you choose, the more costly the list will be. On the other hand, you can also expect a much greater rate of response to the direct mail you send out to a targeted mailing list because they're essentially pre-qualified - they already have shown an interest in buying what you're selling. The increased response rate offsets the higher cost per name.

Building the Right Targeted Mailing Lists

The single most important factor in an effective direct mail campaign is the mailing list you start with. Your purchased mailing lists will only be as effective as your requests make them. That means that you need to do some research before you place your order with a mailing list broker.

Sit down with your customer list and start digging - how much does your average customer make? What professions are most likely to buy from you? How old are they? When are they likely to buy?

Once you've developed the profile of your ideal customer - the ones who already buy from you - you can take it to a mailing list broker who can create new mailing lists based on it to help you reach your most likely customers at the lowest possible cost.

To learn more about subjects like Mailing Lists please visit the web site at: http://www.marketing-lists-direct.com/mailing-list/marketing-mailing-lists.htm

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About the Author

+Chris Robertson is a published author of Majon International. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2011 (Mon Sep 05 2011) Majon International. Majon International is one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing and internet advertising companies on the web. Visit their main business resource internet marketing web site at: http://www.majon.com