Sometimes the sourcing of a mailing list, deciding what to send and arranging fulfillment can all distract you from what offer you are actually going to include in the mailing.

It’s always fine to stay in touch with contacts and customers using a standard letter without an offer, but if your campaign is designed to generate new business then you really need to include an attractive incentive.

There are many types of offer you can use; free trials, money off, buy one get one free, upsells, cross sells and so on. Let’s look at some scenarios when an offer could prove really powerful in a mailing:

• A restaurant mails lists of local consumers celebrating a birthday with a letter introducing their establishment, and including a voucher for a free drink or bottle of house wine with a meal. To finesse the offer further it could apply to lunches when the restaurant is normally quieter, or be limited to a larger group to get more people through the door.
• A DIY store wants to let people who’ve moved into the area know about them, as consumers with a length of residency of 12 months or less are more likely to need home improvement and DIY products. It mails out a voucher for 10% off when they spend over £50.
• A book-keeper targets new start ups in their local area with a letter explaining their services and offering a 50% discount on the first month’s service to trial their service. They know that once a client sees how much easier it is to use their bookkeeping service, they are likely to stay with them for a while.

In summary, if you are going to the trouble and expense of mailing new prospects, go the extra mile and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Best of all Selectabase can help you with mapping your catchment postcode areas, the mailing list, letter writing and the full print and post process for less than the cost of a 2nd class stamp.

Call our experienced team on 01304 383838.

If you’re about to embark on a direct mail campaign it can be tempting to think big and mail a large sized list in one big hit to try and generate instant and impressive results. But there is much to be said for approaching direct mail in a smaller scale and more targeted fashion.

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 new business start ups, brides-to-be or birthday data, all sourced from your local postcode area.

If you would like some one to one advice just call our experienced team on 01304 383838.

If a marketing campaign is going to be successful, understanding the target market is critical. You can’t target everyone, as everybody has different interests and buying habits. Plus, sending information about your products and services to people who are just not interested is a waste of your time and money.

So, how do you define your target market?

1. Picture your customer as an individual

Think about the characteristics of your ideal customer. Start with general facts, such as whether they are male or female, their age, or geographical location – this is your demographic.

Once you have a broad idea of who you want to target, narrow this down with specific characteristics or psychographics. Are you looking to target people who work in certain sectors? What is their marital status? What are their interests? What kind of sense of humour do they have? Where do they shop?

Answers to these questions may seem unnecessary on the surface, but these factors will all have an influence on whether the individual may become a customer. Narrowing down your target to a particular group who are interested in your business will result in more positive responses to your campaign.

2. Examine your current customer database

A good way to get an idea about the characteristics of your customers is to look at your existing customer database.

Compare the details from your previous customers and see if you can find common traits. If you can find patterns, these are good places to start. A common trait in existing customers will give you an idea of the types of people who are likely to place business with you.

3. Know how your product benefits the customer

To gain interest in your product, you need to look at how it helps the customer. You may know all the features, but you also need to know how these features will improve your customers’ lives and businesses.

Outlining the benefits of your product will give you an idea of the types of people that would get the most value from it. These are the people that you need to target to make your campaign successful.

4. Look at your competition

Take a look at who your competition are targeting. If you notice a particular group of people have been missed out, this would be a good time to target them. Reduce your competition by targeting different groups and you could even discover a niche market.

Need some help?

If your business needs a reliable source of new contacts, we can help at Selectabase. We provide local and national business and consumer mailing lists. For more information, contact us on 01304 38 38 38 and one of our team will be happy to help.

Buy a business or consumer mailing list and download it to your computer or device 24/7.

Prospect Download from Selectabase lets you choose and find potential customers based on a wide variety of selection criteria. The service enables businesses to create, buy and download a mailing list online. These lists of prospects can then be used to carry out a direct marketing campaign via the post and for B2B telephone and email marketing.

There are two versions of Prospect Download available online; Business and Consumer.

• The Prospect Download Consumer database contains approximately 32 million addresses, so covers a large percentage of UK households. It’s perfect for selecting prospect lists to use for national campaigns, or sourcing targeted lists for more specific postal mailings.
• TheProspect Download Business database provides easy access to names and addresses of approximately 2.6 million UK businesses. The data is captured from a number of sources and includes comprehensive coverage of all limited companies, public limited companies and the non-corporate sector. Users can select their data by business size, contact name, telephone number, email address, plus many more criteria.

After registering on the Selectabase site for free, users can carry out unlimited searches of Prospect Download. The site is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and all data in the Business and Consumer lists is regularly maintained and cleaned to ensure its accuracy. Once a list has been selected, it can be purchased online using secure payment, and is then available to download to the customer’s own computer or device. There are no minimum orders and the data is available within minutes*.

This ease of use is one of the main reasons that the service was launched by Selectabase, as Steve Sellwood explains;

“We have been providing lists through our dedicated customer service team online and offline since 1996. More and more customers simply want the freedom to go online and run list counts for instant results. Prospect download provides the best of both worlds; high quality data from a reputable source, which you can easily search, refine and purchase online, and fully supported by our team of experts offline.”

For more information, call the Selectabase team now on 01304 383838 or visit our services page and choose Business or Consumer data here.

* New customers will need to be verified before releasing data. This ensures the protection of the individuals and businesses whose details are included in the database.

Most websites contain a mechanism for collecting data on your visitors or customers, but are you then following up on this valuable information with a mailing?

Sending a mailing to enquiries received through your website or your online customers can be a great way to get their attention…

• A well produced mailing piece is more tangible than an email and more likely to get through increasingly cluttered inboxes.
• A mailing is a more secure way to send out exclusive offers or promotions, without them being forwarded by email to numerous non-customers.
• A mailing say’s more about your business than an email; it say’s you have more of as physical presence and can help you stand out from your purely online competitors.
• Customers will see you actually value their business and have taken the time to mail them.

The technique works equally well for B2B or B2C websites, and can be used to target both enquiries and existing customers.?? Plus with the mailing solutions available from Selectabase, mailing smaller quantities is even easier than ever.

Give our team a call on 01304 383838 or visit Create & Post.