“At minimum, list selection is 40% of the total direct mail effort—some would say as much as 75%,” according to Craig Huey, president of InfoMat, a mailing list and direct mail consultancy firm that has worked with, in some capacity, 100 newsletter publishers.
Here are guidelines from Huey on working with lists and brokers:
Don’t equate list quality directly with nixies (mail returned as undeliverable). No one likes to get a lot of returns on a mailing, but some lists which, for whatever reason, contain a large number of nixies still return extremely good results for some publishers.
Always look first for direct response lists. Studies show that 80% of Americans have bought by direct mail. This means, at a minimum, that 20% of any compiled list you use probably contains names of people who have never bought anything, ever, by mail. Further, studies show that of the 80% who have purchased by mail, 20% of them buy 80% of the total mail business. Those are the people whose names you want.
Don’t worry about demographics. In newsletter marketing, standard demographic information on prospects—age, income level, etc.—is not terribly important. You need psychographic information to know if they have interests in common with your publication. The best list is subscribers to a newsletter that is in some way comparable to yours. Next best are book buyers in the field followed by magazine subscribers…everything else is less reliable as an indicator.
Look for lists with direct mail–generated names. People who bought a book in the field are good prospects. People who bought it by mail are much better. Names generated by space ads are next best. Everything else (trade show participants, warranty holders, etc.) is less desirable.
Check points when ordering a list for rental:
Make sure you can get date clearance for the time you want to mail.
Send a sample of your package immediately upon making the request.
Ask the list owner/broker to protect the mail date for you—preferably a week on either side.
Don’t confuse “delivery date” with “mail date.” (It takes longer than most publishers think to get a list and, once you have the labels, you need to allow time for your mail house, etc.)
Merge-Purge if you use a number of lists. Huey does, however, question whether the savings equal the cost for less than 100,000 names. Ask the broker for an 85% net name guarantee on merged-purged lists.
Specify the format you want—cheshire, mag tape, etc. Don’t wait to be surprised.
Always, always, put instructions in writing.
Specify key codes to the broker to facilitate split testing.
Be willing to rent or exchange your own list(s):
Newsletter subscribers are great lists. $70-$80 per thousand names is a reasonable price. 10,000 names can earn a publisher $15,000 a year income quite reasonably.
Look into “reciprocal rental.” Only rent your list to people who are willing to rent you theirs in return or you might be able to exchange names on a name-for-name basis.
How to save a dead list: Lists which, overall, don’t return a satisfactory response can often be “saved” by making special selections:
Recency—“hotline” names of recent buyers.
Monetary—i.e., book buyer lists of purchasers of specified amounts within a specified period.
Actives vs. Expires—for some publications, there is a big difference in response.
Term—on magazine lists, 2- or 3-year subscribers often outperform others significantly.
Testing: Newsletter publishers tend to be impatient. If the 5,000-name test works, they want to go right to the entire 100,000 name list. Conversely, (probably when test results are only so-so), waiting 6 to 8 months to rollout can change response considerably. Huey recommends testing the minimum number of names you can order—wait for your total return to come in before making your evaluation and then rollout cautiously in 2 to 3 months. Don’t mail immediately to 100,000. Spread the risk by going to 20,000 at a time.
“Factors you can’t control can affect your mailings. I remember one publisher who had a year’s worth of materials featuring Spiro Agnew quotes pre-printed…”, says Huey.
Craig Huey, InfoMat, 21171 S. Western Ave., Suite 206, Torrance, CA 90501. 1-310-212-5944.
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