Finding new business 6: reading the datacard

In this post I’m going to describe how to use a datacard to help you choose a mailing list from a list supplier.

The information supplied by mailing list suppliers varies, some are very informative, others slightly less so. I’d advise using these datacards purely as a starting point. Once you feel you’ve found the right list for your product/offer you can contact the list supplier for further qualification before buying.

A Hypothetical Case

Let me introduce you to Lee Walker (an imaginary business person for the purpose of this story).

Lee produces a valuable and informative newsletter for property owning landlords. He wants to reach as many private landlords as possible to promote a subscription to his monthly newsletter.

Lee’s target audience is predominantly male with a good income level. He wants prospects who have shown a clear interest in Property Investment as these are the people who are more likely to have purchased properties and then decided to rent out until the current housing market recovers; effectively becoming Private Landlords.

The challenge for anyone targeting landlords is finding them, especially if they don’t use Letting Management Agents.

Lee decides to check what’s available from mailing list suppliers and gets a datacard from Hilite* that may match his requirements.

Let’s take a look at the card and see what he’s basing his decision on.

Click to open the PDF so you can check what I’m describing.

• In the description, top of the first column, it says Recently Updated. Lee needs to check just how recent ‘recent‘ is.
• The list contains people who are serious about property investment (they must be to spend £1800 to attend a property investment workshop)
• The description of some of the workshops these contacts have attended include ‘Marketing to Tenants & Investors’ - which matches the profile Lee has defined.
• It states the list contains 71% male prospects with 81% being in the middle - higher income bracket. This implies they will have the means to pay a monthly subscription for quality information that could save them time, money and landlord legislative problems.
• The list is described as Direct Mail Responsive. This is an important consideration because Lee intends to promote his newsletter via a direct response mailing campaign.
• The list complies with the Data Protection Act and is MPS cleaned before supply. Lee needs to verify the MPS cleaning takes place immediately before his records are selected. MPS requests do take time to filter through to marketing companies. It is important to check the data against the very latest MPS list.

Although the minimum order quantity is 3,000 records, smaller numbers can be supplied for a higher outlay. This is worth considering so Lee can run test mailings before committing to a large scale promotion.

So - on the face of it - the people on this list seem to match Lee’s requirements.

The next step is for Lee to talk to the supplier and check the answers to the questions I mentioned in the previous post.

And something else he would do well to ask:

• How often has the list been rented/sold? Lee doesn’t want to have a list that has been swamped with offers - at the same time he might think twice about renting a list that has never been used - why is that?
• When was it last used? If it was mailed last week it might be better to check the viability of an alternative list. Lee could ask specifically for the records that were not previously supplied - but those may be the people who have been on the list longer or who are not as responsive as the first record selection might be.

Of course, even with a datacard or other extensive selection criteria, you can’t guarantee these contacts will generate a high response - you are approaching a cold audience. Your offer, its relevance to these people and your mailing content all have an impact on the response you might expect to get.

Guest Blogger

In my next post we’ll explore how to find new customers using PR. I’ve invited a PR specialist to write that post for you - should be very interesting.

~ Carol Bentley

*P.S. I am not recommending you use Hilite for your mailing lists, they are one of many you can approach. It’s simply that their datacard is an easy one to view online.