A Buyer's Guide to Mailing Lists

Traditional advertising such as newspapers, billboards, or magazines, can help introduce a company's products or services to a wide audience. However, determining the results of such advertising can be very difficult.

Direct marketing is usually a very effective way to make connections with both existing and potential customers in such a way that results can be measured. The easiest way to gain entrance into this world is to have mailing lists brokers act as your guide.

What Are Mailing List Brokers?

A mailing list broker can provide your company with relevant lists of prospects that your sales team can focus on. Mailing list brokers can provide the necessary contact information that you will need in order to be able to get in touch with your target market at home or at work.

What Kind of Mailing Lists Should You Rent?

How effective do you think your marketing campaign would be if you had a list of consumers or businesses who have already bought services or products that are similar to what your company sells? What if you can narrow the list down to where your prospects fall into a specific income range, age group, or virtually any other demographic that matches your existing client base?

Mailing lists can be rented from list brokers that do just that.

When searching for the right broker you will have to determine if they get their lists from list owners who compile lists or from list owners who build their own response lists.

A list owner who rents compiled lists simply compiles information from huge databases such as credit bureaus, telephone directories, and annual reports.

Someone who rents a response list builds his or her lists from databases that target people who have either allowed companies to contact them or have made inquiries about particular products and /or services.

If you want to focus on specific demographics then a response list may offer you the most bang for your buck.

Whatever list you rent should be fresh and deliverable. The industry's standard deliverability rate - the percentage of messages that actually reach the people that are intended to receive them - is approximately 92%.

How Can You find the Best Mailing List Broker for Your Needs?

There are thousands of response lists available. A mailing list broker who has experience with companies who target clients similar to yours can help you to find the best list. They will be able to make better choices because of the feedback their prior customers have given them.

In addition, they know which lists are available, which ones worked, and which have not garnered the expected returns.