Direct mail campaigns remain one of the best marketing tools that organizations can use to communicate their message, market their products or offer their services. And, the effectiveness of direct mail has only improved over the past decade. Accuracy of data, lower costs and the ability to specifically define the criteria for inclusion makes the decision to use direct mail more attractive than ever. Let's take a look at how the industry has improved in recent years and how your organization can benefit from those changes.
Direct "mail" campaigns can be disseminated by several vehicles—mail or postal delivery, private delivery (UPS, Fedex, DHL, etc…), fax broadcast, email broadcast or telephone. We can choose to purchase records that would include basic contact information--name, company, address, telephone, fax and email. Or, we can choose to purchase additional data on the specific company or household profile.
Mailing lists for purchase are compiled by a combination of sources that include yellow and white pages; annual reports; SEC filings; federal, state and city government filings, magazines, newspapers, newsletter, and the United States Postal Service. And, higher quality lists are constantly undergoing telephone verification to improve accuracy.
In the past mailing lists could be defined by zip codes or geographic location, and could possibly be refined by SIC codes or business categories. Then, as data became increasingly available and more easily manipulated, we could refine our lists to business size (revenue or number of employees), or household profile (income, home value, ages and gender). Now, we can sharply define our audience based on multiple criteria. Business lists can be selected by type of business, SIC codes, yellow page header, employee size, sales volume, geographic location, type of building and stock exchange affiliation. Data included on business records can include company name, address, telephone, fax, email, website, parent company profile, headquarter and branch locations, names and titles of key management, geographic coordinates, year established, franchise and brand information, stock exchange ticker symbols and even photos of the business. Likewise, residential or consumer lists can be built on a combination of elements such as age of family members, gender, marital status, housing, income, credit cards used, lifestyle, ethnicity, vehicles owned, geographic, length of residence, bankruptcies, behavior, hobbies, net worth, investor profile, household pets, occupation and medical concerns.
Mailing lists can be used for a variety of reasons, and not just for marketing purposes. For example, businesses can use data available from mail houses in determining credit worthiness of a new customer; they can verify references and vendors; they can research potential customers when preparing proposals or presentations; improve routing of sales calls; or allow one to research key decision-makers within specific business categories. And, some mail houses can now provide photos of the location and can verify latitude and longitude coordinates.
In addition to purchasing mailing lists tailored to your organization's specific criteria, mail houses offer additional services that can greatly enhance the success of your direct mail campaigns. These list hygiene services can include National Change of Address (NCOA), Address Correction, Merge/Purge, Delivery Sequence, and Privacy Suppression. These enhancements can verify data on your organization's proprietary database, reduce mailing costs by eliminating duplicates and correcting undeliverable addresses, and increase the likelihood on getting your message into the hands of your prospects most likely to be open to receiving the information. Moreover, list services can build models by analyzing your current customers, so that you can better identify new prospects.
To get the most from your marketing dollars, we must determine what segments of the population best match those companies or individuals most likely to hear and act upon your message, buy your products or contract for your services. The depth of data and the ability to narrowly define those segments exist at a fraction of the cost that we made in the past. Now is the time to re-examine direct "mail" as a viable part of your marketing strategy.