Question about Direct Mailing lists

OK so digging around looking to see lists etc. Does anyone know how the structure works? The price says something like $8/M is that per thousand names?

This is what i am looking at http://lists.the-dma.org/market?page...search_results

I'm not sure. There is no info about it on the website. I would contact them and verify.

$8/m typically means per thousand

Yep and it's for 1 time use. They sprinkle in a bunch of test addresses so that if you use their list more than one, they will know.

Cheers,

-Hakrjak

So when you rent a list, they infact send you the list in its entirety? and their only recourse is to check the test addresses to see if you have used it twice?

Just trying to get a handle on that aspect, to see if its worth it. Does lower cost typically mean lower response rates?

What about opt-out and dirty lists??

I've only done direct mail once, and I paid about $80 for 1000 addresses I think, which were delivered to me on prestick labels. No idea on response rates.... I'd think that response rates on direct mail would be pretty low still... We were peddling some MLM scheme at the time, and we got about 3-5 signups out of the 1000 mail pieces that went out.

Cheers,

- Hakrjak

Did you feel it was worth the cost? or did those sign-up's not net you very much money? i will have to dig around and see what else i can learn about it.

Disclaimer: I never got around to using the service but I nearly did. Check out Postcardmania.com. They have a lot of good articles about direct mail.

What they told me was that to really gauge the effectiveness of a list you have to hit each person 2-3 times.

They sold lists and do the postage and honestly when Jill and I looked over different options we thought they would be really good, we just never 'got there'. Kinda wish we had now because it looked good.

Guys - I have no affiliation to their business whatsoever and can't give a true recommendation because I never used them, I did research the idea for a Lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng time and that is who I was going to use. I'd suggest reading there about direct mail if nothing else.

I've also worked lists as a broker doing cold calls and some lists are rich, others suck. You want to know how well worn that list is. When I looked into this a 'great' response rate was anything over 1%. For us, if we sent out 5000 postcards and got 50 new customers I would have done it every week for a year to build my customer list but again... we shelved the business before we quite got to it. If anyone has used them or a similar service I'd be interested in hearing. Advertising was a scary one for me, sometimes it came close to break even, other times the chirping of crickets was friggin deafening.

You can buy lists to use more than once. It's usually slightly more expensive but the list price is always the least expensive thing when you do a mailing.

Watch out and make sure you get your list from a trusted list seller. This is crucial. The return is usually about 1.5-3%.

I usually like to send out my mailing and resend the exact same stuff two weeks later. If you get calls that someone wants to be removed from your mailing list, you tell them it will take up to four weeks to kick in and respect their wishes after that for sure.

Again, try to get the best quality list.

Once I purchased a list with a very specific target market in mind (something like married adults 25-40 with children ages 3-8 in a specific county) went with a cheap list and had zero response; plus well over 20 calls with comments such as "I am retired and my children have already graduated from college, can you get me off your mailing list, please." Grrr...

Well, they will send you the amount of names you want on the list or in it's entirety. The list is usually spoken of as the "universe".

For example, rc car collectors. There could be a list with a universe of 2 million. You have the option of getting the list partially or in its entirety. You then have the ability to determine age, gender, income, demographic, maybe even more.

I would say that you do get what you pay for. There is usually a per item tack on once you pay the base rate for a list and want to target it more closely.

Opt out can be discussed with your broker and you can do research to determine what companies are known to have dirty lists or not.

Just as an added note, ALL of this information is free in the reference section in your local library. I have spent hours studying direct marketing and have not spent a dime on research.

That's my wooden nickel.