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Your list is the most important factor in
your campaign. In traditional direct mail, this is an actual list of
names and addresses; for outbound telemarketing, names and phone numbers;
for email marketing, names and email addresses.
There are three factors to look at in
choosing your list: qualification, volume, and quality. (Who you send to,
how many you send, and how well the list you use really matches those
criteria.) We'll look at each of these separately.
Qualification
For B2B marketers, there are really two
aspects of list qualification: what companies you select, and who you
target within those companies.
Traditional mailing list vendors, and many
email list vendors, offer selections by company SIC (Standard Industrial
Classification) codes or by the newer NAICS (North American
Industry Classification System) codes. Both systems
allow you to select companies by industry. (You may also see the NAPCS -
North American Product Classification System
- which is in testing for service classification through 2004.)
Another effective way to target companies is
to use lists of subscribers to trade publications, or members of trade
associations, in your market. These lists are often very good, and tend
to be up-to-date, particularly if the publication is audited by an
external agency like the BPA (Business of Performing Audits
- the primary auditor of subscription data for periodicals).
You can also select by geography and company
size with direct mail lists, most telemarketing lists, and many email
lists, to further narrow your target market.
You can select your actual buyers by either
job title or job function, which are available for most lists.
Volume
How many should you send? Divide the number
of leads you need by your expected response rate - the industry average is
around 2%. So, to get the 2000 leads we need from last issue's example,
we need:
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Contacts |
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Leads /
Response Rate |
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2000 leads /
.02 |
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100,000 contacts. |
Quality
Spend the money to rent
a quality list: subscribers from a BPA-audited publication or a reliable
list broker. Use selections to narrow your list - you'll save money on
the total campaign.
For email, always use a
"double opt-in" list in which every subscriber has confirmed that they
want to receive offers on that list. And check by subscribing to the list
yourself. It's also a good idea to add a couple of "sleeper" names to
direct mail lists, so you can see when the offer actually goes out, when
it's received, and what kind of shape it's in when received.
Next issue:
constructing a compelling offer.
(Review the
MarCom Acumen Guidebook for more detailed information on
Direct Marketing.)
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