Each month we bring you the latest trends amongst UK businesses and consumers, all drawn from the range of Selectabase direct marketing lists. According to the most recent month’s data we identified the following…..

March 2012

This month we updated and fully restored Prospect Download Business & Consumer from Selectabase. This means that you could now have access to 2,639,728 businesses UK wide and 36,861,345 consumers UK wide!!

Why use Prospect Download Business?

Use Prospect Download 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to buy and download business-to-business mailing lists. Register online now and receive 50 free list credits in your account ready for you to download sample data.

Accurate data is at the heart of any successful business-to-business direct marketing campaign. The Prospect Download business database provides:

• Easy access to over 2 million business names and addresses.
• Quality data captured from a range of sources and including comprehensive coverage of all limited companies, public limited companies and the non-corporate sector.
• Selection by business size, contact name, telephone number, plus many more criteria.
• No minimum order, affordable prices and 50 free records to get you started.

Simply run your counts, buy online and download the data you need. Prospect Download is provided by Selectabase, a leading UK independent list provider and member of the Direct Marketing Association.

Why use Prospect Download Consumer?

Use Prospect Download 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to buy and download business-to-business mailing lists. Register online now and receive 50 free list credits in your account ready for you to download sample data.

The Prospect Download consumer database covers the whole of the UK and offers:

• Approximately 36 million addresses, covering the majority of UK households.
• Extensive targeting selections by age, gender, lifestyle, location, income or affluence.
• Data for both local and national direct mail and telemarketing campaigns.
• No minimum order, affordable prices and 50 free records to get you started.

Prospect Download Consumer is provided by Selectabase, a leading UK independent list provider and member of the Direct Marketing Association.

For more info visit http://www.selectabase.co.uk/buy-a-list/ now!!

Each month we bring you the latest trends amongst UK businesses and consumers, all drawn from the range of Selectabase direct marketing lists. According to the most recent month’s data we identified the following…..

March 2012

This month Birthday Mailings from Selectabase identified 142,941 individuals who are celebrating a milestone birthday in March 2012. These individuals may be turning 21, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60 or 65. The most popular birthday milestone was 21, with 23,779 individuals turning 21 in March 2012.

Why should businesses contact consumers on their birthday?

In the course of promoting our Birthday Mailings marketing leads, we are often asked why businesses should target their marketing to consumers on their birthday? The answer is that celebrating a birthday can trigger a range of opportunities for many different types of business – even when times are tough economically. So here we examine the science behind a birthday celebration.

There’s one time of year when consumers still spend money (no matter how tough the economy) and that’s when a birthday is celebrated. Businesses could well benefit from tapping into this extra spend.

Broadly speaking birthday spending falls into two different categories; self purchase and gift purchase…

Self Purchase Birthday Spending

• The person celebrating the birthday will often spend a significant amount on pampering themselves with products and services such as hairdressing, fashion, clothing, accessories, beauty treatments and tanning.
• Birthday celebrants can also make spending decisions on how and where they will celebrate their birthday creating opportunities for bars, restaurants, nightclubs, days out, venues, sports, outdoor activities and leisure activities.

Gift Purchase Birthday Spending

• A birthday obviously triggers a gift-giving occasion with the typical circle of gift givers at an average of 6-8 people all looking to spend money.
• Gift givers may look to spend on gifts of course but also jewellery, fashion, electricals, gourmet, florists and also day’s out and experiences.

Of course there can often be overlap between these two areas of spending, as the birthday celebrant will often drop ‘hints’ to those around them about what gifts they’d like and how they want to celebrate a birthday.

So the majority of these spending activities can be traced back to the person about to celebrate the birthday which leaves the question of how to identify them in good time?

This is where Birthday Mailings leads from Selectabase can help – subscribers can choose to receive full address details of consumers about to celebrate a birthday in their local postcode area. Leads can be filtered by gender and the age of the target market to just focus on key milestone birthdays such as a 21st or 40th. Visit http://www.selectabase.co.uk/birthday/ now!!

Each month we bring you the latest trends amongst UK businesses and consumers, all drawn from the range of Selectabase direct marketing lists. According to the most recent month’s data we identified the following…..

March 2012

This month 4,495 new business start ups were identified by New B2B from Selectabase. Domestic Cleaners were the most popular type of start up in the UK with a whopping 111 Domestic Cleaners captured in March 2012. We also identified an additional 8 Domestic Cleaners who either relocated, changed ownership, were a new branch or franchise or had a change of function.

Why Domestic Cleaners?

Like us, you may be asking “Why Domestic Cleaners”? As we found from www.startups.co.uk/cleaning-business there are plenty of reasons to start up a Domestic Cleaning Business;

“A cleaning business is a popular choice for sole traders. In theory all you need is a sponge, a bottle of Flash and some good old elbow grease.

Cleaning businesses cover everything from one cleaner with a couple of domestic properties to maintain each week, to a large commercial business with thousands of staff on the books. There are domestic cleaners, office cleaners, hospital and school cleaners and then let’s not forget the other niches in this industry such as carpet, window and vehicle cleaners.

According to the Cleaning and Support Services Association (CSSA), the cleaning and support services industry is worth around £10bn, and employs approximately 820,000 people. The industry is traditionally dominated by small organisations, with around a third of all UK cleaning staff working within companies with no more than nine employees.”

What is New B2B?

New B2B from Selectabase is a unique direct marketing solution that provides you with a monthly list of all the latest new and changing businesses in your chosen postcode area. New B2B provides a constant and easily manageable source of new business leads that simply have to be followed up by letter or telephone. With New B2B you can select the opportunity type, postcode area and even industry type. This means if you are a supplier to a specific industry we can help! Visit www.selectabase.co.uk/newb2b/ for more info now!

Each month we bring you the latest trends amongst UK businesses and consumers, all drawn from the range of Selectabase direct marketing lists. According to the most recent month’s data we identified the following trends…

BUSINESS TRENDS:

3,906 new business start ups were identified by New B2B. Beauty Salons were once again the most popular type of start up in the UK. Receive monthly lists of new start up and changing businesses in your industry or local area with New B2B. Visit http://www.selectabase.co.uk/newb2b/ for more info.

2,662,618 businesses were identified and listed in the Prospect Download Business database. Reach any selection of these businesses and carry out counts for free online. Visit https://www.selectabase.co.uk/lists/onlineb2b/ for more info.

CONSUMER TRENDS:

108,731 consumers celebrated a milestone birthday according to Birthday Mailings. The most popular was a 21st with 19,694 people celebrating this age. Receive lists of local consumers about to celebrate a birthday with a subscription to Birthday Mailings. Visit http://www.selectabase.co.uk/birthday/for more info.

86,147 consumers recently moved home in the UK. The top postcode for home movers was RG (Reading). Get details of home movers in your local area with Recently Moved. Visit http://www.selectabase.co.uk/recentlymoved/ for more info.

33,587,104 individual consumers were identified and listed in the Prospect Download Consumer marketing database. Find lists of your target consumers online using a range of selection criteria. Visit https://www.selectabase.co.uk/lists/onlineb2c for more info.

PREFERENCE TRENDS:

16,943,590 UK individual telephone numbers are now registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), and 1,999,451 UK company numbers are registered with the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS). Organisations are, by law, obliged to screen their lists against these stop lists before calling. Visit http://www.selectabase.co.uk/i-have-a-list/ for more info.

5,181,105 individuals are registered with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS). Screen your data against the TPS, CTPS and MPS using our simple Easy Check application. Visit http://www.selectabase.co.uk/i-have-a-list/ for more info.

At Selectabase we specialise in helping small to medium sized businesses use direct marketing to gain more leads and sales from ether businesses or consumers.

OCTOBER SPECIAL OFFER:

Try our business or consumer prospect lists free! New users get 50 free list credits from Prospect Download to get yours now!

Rather than mailing your entire list in one go, sometimes it can be best to take it in stages, by mailing smaller segments from your list over a period of time.

• Mailing individual segments gives you a better chance to target your message to each of those segments, rather than trying to communicate everything to everyone in one go. This could help increase the overall response rate from your campaign.
• Mailing in stages gives you more chances to test your mailing and experiment with different formats, inserts, designs and offers. For example you could even try handwritten envelopes which some say can increase open rates.
• Smaller mailings are easier to manage so you could handle them in house or in small batches using a mailing service like Create and Post from Selectabase, which mails your letters for you.
• Responses can be easier to handle if they are received in regular batches. If you sell a product pressure on fulfillment can be reduced or if you sell a service your staff will be able to spend more time on each enquiry and hopefully convert more of them.

Selectabase can help you mail smaller segments in a number of ways. The Prospect Download online list service let’s you download small quantities of data as often as you like, for each individual mailing. Each time your data will be checked against previous downloads to avoid duplication and cleaned for accuracy. If you buy Prospect Download list credits in advance then you can also save the download fee for each order, bringing down the cost of your data even further.

Selectabase also offer a range of subscription packages for mailing lists which send you a targeted mailing list each month for you to follow up. Markets you can target with these packages include a list of movers, new business start ups or birthday data, all sourced from your local postcode area.

This can help New B2B users get maximum value from their subscription, as not all recipients may respond the first time that you contact them simply because the timing may not be right.

The New B2B direct marketing service identifies new business start ups, changes in ownership and relocations across the UK each month then provides subscribers with a monthly feed of these leads from their local postcode area.

If you’ve been commissioned to identify the size of a market or break it down into segments, then register free at Prospect Download and you can carry out unlimited free searches using our business and consumer databases.

There are a huge range of potential search criteria to choose from to help identify specific sectors including Mosaic geodemographic profiling for consumers.  Prospect Download will then save your searches for future use.

For geographic searches you can use our free postcode profiling tool to identify exactly where posctode regions are or even find all postcodes within a radius from a fixed point.

If a client is interested in promoting to a target market you’ve identified, then new users of Prospect Download can even download a trial of live data using the 50 free list credits which are allocated to each new online account.

If a client then wants to purchase a list for a campaign, intermediaries can purchase lower cost list credits in advance to then resell data to their clients. Credits are valid for 12 months so can be used to obtain data for a range of different client’s campaigns.

Finally, if you need any support in preparing marketing materials for your client’s mailing campaigns, you can use our free letter writing tool to create winning copy quickly and easily.

In many B2B sectors now is a good time to be contacting prospects about new products and services. Key staff or business owners have now all returned from holiday full of new ideas and an open mind – ready to hear about what your business can offer them through a direct marketing campaign.

In consumer markets there is a brief window of opportunity over the next few months before Christmas starts to loom large in the minds of consumers and spare cash gets spent on the festive season.

Many business owners and marketing departments may have had a close eye on costs recently, which has led to a more cautious approach to investing in marketing. Yet unless you invest in your business it won’t grow all on its own.

Even if you think you have plenty of work at the moment and don’t need to invest in marketing, who knows what is around the corner in these unstable times. You need to be prepared with a healthy pipeline of potential leads and prospects.

To help you, we can offer targeted business lists and consumer lists as well as new low cost mailing services.

Whether its unveiling celebrity indescretion or co-ordinating public demonstrations, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can rapidly spread information and news, good or bad, like never before.

Here are just a few examples of how social media can now have an impact on business as well, in the form of your next direct marketing campaign:

If your campaign is targeting existing clients or key accounts then you should now include details of your social media presence on your mailings – getting satisfied core customers to support you on social media can help build a positive reputation.

When you receive responses to your mailing you can also find and follow these prospects on social media sites. This gives you another way to keep in the forefront of their mind to try and close the deal.

When sending a campaign, make sure you use accurate and up to date data. You don’t want criticism of your poorly targeted campaign or inaccurate name and address details to appear across social media.

If you include a special deal or offer in your mailing you can often expect it to rapidly appear on social media as well – so why not use this to your advantage? Release simple voucher or offer codes in your mailings or even suggest recipients share the deal with their friends using a campaign specific hashtag you’ve created.

The credits are valid for a whole 12 months and can be used to test the quality and accuracy of Prospect Download data, as well as experiencing just how easy it is to source and purchase list data online.

Using the free credits data can be sourced from two datasets. Business lists can be selected using a wide range of criteria such as location, trading format, industry, turnover, staff, job title and many more. Consumers can also be selected by age, gender, location, income, lifestyle, property type and so on.

Credits will also be given to any existing Prospect Download web users who have not yet purchased from the service. To receive the credits existing Selectabase website users just need to sign in and visit Prospect Download, or new users can get started here: http://www.selectabase.co.uk/buy-a-list/.