Tailored to Perfection: Crafting Targeted Mailing Lists That Convert

Direct mail is the best way to reach your prospects. Unlike email communication, which is easy to ignore, direct mail presents your prospects with a tangible object that they can hold and interact with. You can use colorful designs, special offers, and smart targeting to make sure that you stand out from the crowd. So, why doesn't it work for everyone?

The success of any direct mail campaign depends on the quality of the direct mailing list you use. Direct mailing lists that are inaccurate or out-of-date do little more than waste your time and your money. As a business, you have to make sure that your direct mail campaigns hit home by ensuring that you partner with a company that uses high-quality, accurate, targeted mailing lists. If not, your direct mailing marketing campaign postcards will end up either in the wrong hands or unseen and undelivered in a dark corner of the post office.

What Are Targeted Direct Mailing Lists?

Targeted direct mailing lists are lists of individuals or businesses that have been compiled based on specific criteria, such as demographics, interests, or behaviors. This allows businesses to send their direct mail pieces to people who are most likely to be interested in what they have to offer.

A high-quality targeted direct mailing list has to be:

• Relevant: The list should be relevant to your target audience. Make sure that the criteria used to compile the list are consistent with the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your ideal customers.
• Accurate: If the compiled mailing list isn't up to date, you'll waste money sending mail to people who simply aren't interested in your products or services.
• Sizeable: The list should be large enough to reach a significant number of potential customers but not so large that it is too expensive to send mail to everyone.
• Affordable The cost of the targeted mailing list should be reasonable and affordable for your budget.

Look for a company that backs their targeted direct mail lists with a Delivery Guarantee. This means that you'll be refunded for any of your direct mail pieces that are returned.

How To Build Your Own Targeted Direct Mail Lists

Most direct mail marketing companies offer direct mailing lists to their customers, but it's a good idea to build your own list over time. Here's how:

Define your target audience

Who are you trying to reach with your direct mail campaign? What are their needs and interests? Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, you can start to develop a list of potential recipients.

Collect and Segment Customer Data

You can collect customer records through your CRM system, website queries, targeted surveys, or public records to build up a mailing list. Once you have gathered data, you can segment your list into smaller groups based on shared characteristics, such as demographics, interests, or purchase history. This will allow you to send more targeted messages to each group.

Clean and Update Your List

It's important to clean and update your mailing list regularly to ensure that it is accurate and up-to-date. This will help to improve your deliverability rates and response rates.

Choosing the Right Mailing List

Before you can start your direct mail marketing campaign, you need to decide who you want to target. There are a number of targeted direct mail lists to choose from, including specialty lists, business lists, and consumer lists. Let's take a look at a few of them:

Zip Code Mailing Lists

If you want to target customers based purely on their location, zip codes are the way to go. Zip code mailing lists (also called occupant or saturation mailing lists) target customers based on specific geographical locations.

It works really well for businesses operating in a specific area, e.g., dentists, real estate agents, handymen, and restaurants. You can also benefit from lower bulk postage rates. 

Consumer Mailing Lists

If you want to target customers using specific demographic factors, you should look at consumer mailing lists. These lists can target customers based on their age, gender, the value or age of their home, their income, etc. These lists are very well-suited to campaigns that need some form of segmentation, e.g., dentists offering discounts on new dentures to senior citizens or real estate agents offering a free home evaluation to homeowners who have lived at the same address for ten years or more.

Business Mailing Lists

Business mailing lists are targeted mailing lists designed for B2B marketers. B2B marketing can be complex. Your mailer needs to land in the hands of the right decision-maker, not the receptionist's trash can. Make sure that your direct mailing company uses a targeted mailing list that can generate the right leads and target the right audience.

New Mover Mailing Lists 

New movers are people who have just moved into a specific area. This can be an ideal time to introduce your business to them, especially if you are a dentist, gym or restaurant owner, landscaper, hair salon, or childcare professional. If you want to speak to new residents, look for a targeted mailing service that specializes in new movers or first-time homeowner mailing lists.

Specialty Mailing Lists

If you want to reach a niche or a very narrow pool of recipients, you need to look for a specialty direct mailing list. These targeted mailing lists hone in on specific specialties, such as political donors, churches and nonprofits, doctors, or schools.

Key Factors For Success

An accurate, targeted mailing list is the most important factor for a successful direct mail campaign, but it's not the only one. Make sure that you also focus on factors including:

Design

Your direct mail design should grab your target's attention from the very beginning. It should maintain a consistent color scheme, typography, and layout throughout the entire design. Make sure that your mailing company incorporates high-quality images and establishes a clear hierarchy of information. Clear headlines and call-to-action is the key to engagement and generating the right leads.

High-Quality Printing

Your direct mail piece is a direct reflection of your brand. You need to use high-quality printing to create the best possible impression of your business - it makes your materials more visually appealing, easier to read, and more professional-looking.

Targeting and Retargeting

The best way to boost your ROI and success rate is to repeat your campaign regularly. But simply sending the same mailer to the same addresses isn't the best approach. Think of addressable geofencing as a way to bring the digital and physical worlds together while repeating your message to reinforce it. It starts by drawing a virtual fence around specific addresses or places. Once these areas are fenced in, you can send targeted online ads to the devices linked to those addresses. A real estate agent can send a postcard about a real home evaluation service and then follow up with a digital ad to amplify the message on a different channel.

Conclusion

Choosing the right targeted direct mailing list is the key to a successful direct mail campaign, so don't leave your mailing list up to chance. Cactus Mailing is a full-service direct mail company that specializes in targeted postcard mailings. We offer custom-designed postcards, bulk printing and mailing, and a focus on ROI.

With over 21 years of experience covering 50,000+ campaigns and a trusted delivery guarantee firmly in place, we work with you to develop a targeted mailing list and create a postcard design that will resonate with your target audience.

We have a huge database of varied, accurate, and up-to-date mailing lists available to our clients and will gladly help you find the right audience for your message.

Get in touch with Cactus Mailing to find out more today.