How to zero in on your best prospects and target them with laser precision
by Debbie Stanley
Where do you start when trying to find the best prospects for your direct response promotion? Simple.
Your ideal audience will be people who have bought products similar to your own.
Why? Because you already know that they're interested in what you're selling.
For example, let's say you're marketing a newsletter. Your best prospects are active, paid newsletter subscribers. If they've subscribed to one newsletter, they're likely to subscribe to another.
By contrast, someone who has never subscribed to a newsletter may not know what newsletters are ... may not understand the value they provide ... and may not even like to read. It's better to go after prospects who are savvy about what you're selling.
Don't worry that they're already being serviced by your competition. People with a particular interest, need, or desire will likely buy multiple products in one category.
So if you have an investment newsletter, find a list of other investment newsletter readers. If you sell health supplements, find a list of people who have bought other alternative health products.
Important: You're not just looking for people with an interest in your subject matter. You want people who have taken action and bought something.
For newsletters, you want people who have paid for a subscription, not just those who inquired or sent for free information. There are a lot of deadbeats out there. Try not to waste your money marketing to them.
Also, active names are better than expired names. But don't rule out expires completely. Just because they stopped subscribing to one publication, it doesn't mean you can't tempt them with your offer.
The ideal list is people who have bought recently.
Why? They've just bought for a reason. Maybe they've just started a new hobby, just started investing, or just started on a natural foods kick.
These names are hot! They've barely put their credit card away when suddenly your offer arrives.
Right now they're thirsting for any information they can get about their subject of interest, or looking for more products to satisfy their current need or desire. It makes your sale that much easier.
This subset of names is called the Hotline. Most list owners will be able to provide names based on recency of purchase — 30 days ... 90 days ... six months. It varies, but you want to get the most recent names that have been put on the file.
This is just one of the "e;Selects"e; that list owners offer. Other Selects might include...
- Gender — This is handy if you have a product that's marketable only to women or only to men, and saves you from wasting half your mailing costs.
- Geographic — You may only want to market to a certain region, or leave out certain states from your mailing. The geographic select provides this ability.
- Age — Do you have a product just for people 25-30 ... or for those over 40? You may be able to target the appropriate group with the age select.
- Income — This demographic information could be crucial to your success if your product only appeals to those in a certain income bracket.
Keep in mind that owners of smaller lists — say 25,000 to 50,000 names — aren't going to break down their lists into a lot of different selects. But most can still give you gender, geographic and the hotline names.
Selects will typically cost an extra $10 to $15 per thousand names, and can be well worth the added expense.
You can also sometimes get a list segment through Overlays. Here's how that works:
Let's say a health publisher has a huge file — over a million names. They know that within the file are groups of people that can be segmented by what they like to do, what they own, who they are, and so on.
They take their list to a database company that has tens of millions of names categorized by everything you can imagine — people who own boats, pet owners, couples who vacation in Hawaii at their timeshare, golfers, left-handed skiing enthusiasts. You name it, they've got the names in that category.
This database gets overlaid on the list owner's file, so they can pull out, say, the names of all the pet owners who have subscribed to their health publications.
Overlays enhance a list so that it has more value.
A marketer of a pet product may not be interested in a list from a health newsletter publisher. But if the list owner can offer just the names of people with pets, now it's getting interesting.
Sure, that segment won't be as valuable as a list of subscribers to Dog Fancy, but it can certainly be worth considering.
Why not just get the list of pet owners without overlaying it onto the health subscribers list? Because we know that people who have subscribed to a health newsletter or bought their products are direct-mail responsive.
You can save a lot of money in mailing costs by targeting the right prospects with your promotion. A good list broker will know how to find them using the criteria I've outlined for you here.
© 2004 DS Direct Communications
Debbie Stanley is a list broker with over 18 years experience. She helps marketers in health, finance and other specialty areas get the highest rate of return on their direct mail campaigns by finding lists of buyers most likely to be responsive to promotions in the mail. Contact Debbie through Finn Communications.