Rating & Testing Mailing Lists “In specialized, narrow, business-to-business newsletter marketing, the right package and offer may be the vital element, but in the broader area of consumer newsletters, and especially financial letters, my experience tells me that without comparison, the list is the most important element,” says Craig Huey of InfoMat. The best prospect for a newsletter offer is the subscriber to other newsletters. Exception: Some conference lists are great. The average attendee at the recent Howard Ruff convention subscribes to 3.2 newsletters; the comparable figure for the delegate to Jim Blanchard’s NCMR meeting is 6.4 newsletter subscribers! Evaluate a list by looking at the source of the names. The best names are direct mail generated. Look at the package the owner is using. Even when it’s a newsletter sub list, the people on it didn’t originally subscribe to that newsletter; they bought the direct mail package they were sent. Lists from prestigous publications are not necessarily the best. Just two examples: The Dines Letter list tends to be quite old and contains a lot of prospect names. ValueLine is a very large list, but the majority of the names have been generated by space ads and tend not to work especially well for direct mail offers. The size of your universe depends, for consumer letters, on the quality of your package. A four-star package will work with marginal lists. Be certain you have that package before you start mailing to those lists. I’d recommend a test start of 25,000 to 50,000 names from five to ten lists. Don’t focus entirely on the big lists. That giant rollout, if it works, is very tempting, but often the better results come from the smaller lists. For a broad-based test, select segments from a range of list types, a couple high-priced products, a couple lower, a couple technical lists, a couple fundamental…(Don’t test very small lists. If it’s 2,500 to 3,000 total, just mail it.) Don’t get too excited. Don’t pyramid from good test results. 5X test quantity is probably safe on a continuation mailing. Compare how your mailing is doing with others who have used the list. InfoMat will do this for you. If we aren’t in a position to give you specific numbers, we can certainly state, in general terms, how your mailing is doing in comparison with others who have used a list. A final caution: Never pre-plan mailing quantities. Let testing and analysis determine what you’ll finally drop…a pre-decision to mail a certain number of names can lead to some very poor list choices.
InfoMat, Inc. |
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