Mailing lists: best practices

When supplying your list

Just provide what is needed. We tend to get lists with several address fields (primary and secondary addresses) as well as data we do not need (email, phone, one list even provided eye color!). It's helpful if we only receive the fields we need: name, address, city, state and zip, plus any fields necessary to implement your personlization strategy.

Build in time for an NCOA database update and any de-duping necessary. An NCOA update ensures that you have the correct address for any customer who may have moved. Deduping multiple lists ensures that you don't send multiple copies of the same mailer to the same person and/or address. Both are critical best practices for any mailing.

List acquisition and mining

Effective mailings usually involve three things: a good target list, a good offer or call to action and an appealing design. Direct mail is the only medium that is guaranteed to end up in your target's hands. It's up to you to make them want to read it and/or keep it!

For a simple example of how to augment your house list, let's say you're opening a new jewelry store, and you want to offer a promo sale for your grand opening. You can target women with income over a certain amount who live within 10 miles of the store. We can then show you how many names/addresses come up. This information is free. You then decide if you want to buy the list. Typical, single-use lists start at a minimum of $60, and are about $35 per thousand in addition to that. It can vary, depending on the type of list - and if it will be used multiple times, but this is a simple example.

When you need to find new prospects for your direct mail, we can help you build a list to reach them. We rely on a combination of internal list acquisition and a big data solution for advanced targeting. Here are some list-related articles we've previously written.

• You can read about our list acquisition services by clicking here.
• For more information on how we approach lists derived from big data sources, we have an overview of the strategies involved in building a profile here.
• We explain the service we offer to actually acquire a list from big data sources in our article on niche marketing.
• Finally, we have a great overview on our address verification service available in our article on the NCOA Database.