How to Choose an Effective Direct Mailing List

Businesses are always on the hunt for new customers, but it’s not just as simple as that. You’ve got to know where to find them and how to approach them in the most effective manner. If you look in the wrong places and use the wrong medium to try and attract new customers, it’s not going to be very effective at all.

Choosing a direct mailing list

Direct marketing is the perfect opportunity to get your business’ name spoken about by the right kind of people. Ideally, you want potential customers who want to hear about products, latest news, your service and any discount offers. 

Here are our tips on how to create an effective direct mailing list:

Fully Understand Your Target Audience

There’s no point sending your direct mail campaign to the wrong audience, is there? The chances are it’ll be a massive waste of time and money as the wrong kind of customer will simply throw away your mail as soon as it lands through the door.

After all, if you’re not interested in something, you’re not going to read and act upon it.

Avoid this outcome by identifying your ideal customers’ basic demographic, such as pointing out the gender that you want to target and the age range.

For example, travel agents usually target their party holidays at both male and females within an age range of 18-30 years old. It’d be ineffective and a wasted effort trying to target these holidays at older couples.

Once you’ve identified your ideal demographic, you’ve then got a very basic understanding of your customer. So, in order to strengthen your efforts, you should aim for a full profile on your target market. For example, identifying different shopping trends and purchasing behaviour.

You can also look into their everyday lifestyle routine and habits. This can help you identify the perfect way to target your audience. For example, whether they want a quick read leaflet or have more time on their hands to get stuck into a brochure.

Specifically Target Ideal Prospects

Once you’ve found all the details of your ideal prospect, you can then start to form lists of potential new customers and leads. A targeted direct mail list can prove to be pretty expensive.

But, they are usually the most likely to haul the greatest response rate and create the most loyal customers too.

Remember, mass marketing campaigns are not the way forward. By campaigning to everybody you possibly can, you’re wasting a lot of money and time as not everyone will be interested in your product and brand. Why waste money by targeting people who aren’t going to give you anything back?

Targeted mailing lists, on the other hand, specify your audience and pinpoint your best opportunities.

Pick a Mailing List Format

The right mailing list will contain who you deem your most valuable prospects to be and is crucial to the overall success of your campaign. Therefore, the more careful you are in selecting this ideal customer, the better the chance of success your direct mail campaign is likely to have.

When you are deciding on which mailing list type to go with, consider the following three most popular options:

  • Speciality Lists. This mailing list type allows you to specifically identify your ideal target market.

  • Custom Mailing Lists. Hand select the customers that meet your needs and required criteria.

  • Cloned List. Find customers that are similar to your current best customers.

Plan Realistically

When planning on what you want to achieve from your direct mail campaign, it’s important that you’re completely realistic with your aims and expectations.

You need to make sure that your goals are actually achievable and that you don’t end up wasting your budget on pointless plans that won’t work. Believe in your aims and expectations and go and grab them.

Manage Your Budget Effectively

Managing your budget effectively is absolutely key. Obviously, you don’t want to overspend on your campaign more than you need to, but you don't want to allocate too small of a budget so you can’t achieve any kind of results.

A good balance is crucial and it’s good practice to do your research before you allocate your budget.

Why not outline an industry average? See what other businesses have done before and the results of their campaigns. You should then get a good feel for how much you’ll need to allocate to a campaign for it to be a success.

Internal or External Lists

Before you decide on your mailing list, you should decide whether you can manage your campaign in-house, or whether you should pass it to an external company who can expertly manage everything for you. Consider whether you have the ability to create eye-catching designs, cover the cost of equipment and mail your direct materials without it having a knock-on effect on your overall business.

External companies can give you fewer things to focus on and can help ease the pressure by taking your campaign into their hands. They’re experts in the game and have the capacity to manage many different projects effectively. They know what it takes to succeed in a campaign and will use their knowledge to help you achieve great results.

Perfect Your Direct Mail Campaign With B&B Press

Choosing the correct direct mail list is directly related to the success of your campaigns. So, you can’t rush into the decision as there’s plenty of different factors to consider. It’s important to pick an experienced team who you can put your full trust in.

B&B Press has been helping customers achieve great results for over 60 years and are experts in all things printing to help you along the way.

We've created a free checklist to green printing. With green being our future the time to make the change is now.

Download it below.

Download The Green Checklist

Explore the
Best of Green
Printing Tips

You’re probably well aware of the growing importance and demand of eco-friendly products.

Modern technology has made these kinds of items increasingly cheaper to produce and more visually appealing. They’re a great way of lowering your business’ environmental impact - but how exactly do you produce the best kind of print using these methods?

Our checklist will give you the best advice for creating an impactful sustainable print solution.