How can you ensure that your mailing lists are still reaching your target audience? - By: Selectabase

There are two main ways of ensuring your direct marketing is still reaching the right audience as effectively as possible.

1) List Cleansing

The need to clean your mailing list is ever present. UK consumers and businesses are in a constant state of flux, and have more and more opportunities to decline receiving direct marketing messages through various suppression files.

For example over 60% of UK households and more than 55% of businesses have registered telephone numbers with the Telephone Preference Service, in order to block unwanted sales calls. Around 3 out 5 unchecked sales or marketing phone calls to consumers or businesses will now be to a TPS or CTPS registered number.

In addition, the consumer environment in particular is constantly on the move, as people move house and leave home. In the UK 3,200,000 people move house every year - up to 7,000 every day. Approximately 11% of addresses are mailed incorrectly each year. Plus the latest official figures show that there were 572,192 deaths registered in 2006 across the United Kingdom – it is both unethical and costly to continue mailing the deceased with your marketing messages.

Consumer or business or consumer addresses should be checked against the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) Quarterly in order to meet obligations, alongside a check against the relevant Telephone Preference Service (TPS) for consumers or Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS) for businesses.

2) Test Marketing

Once your list has been cleansed it is a good idea to trial your mailing list. Sending your mailings to a test group of 100, with a follow up telephone call a shortly afterwards will ensure that you are sending your information to the relevant people.

This may seem time consuming in the short term, but longer term it can save your business money and avoid wasting time and energy. By the time you’ve factored in the cost of postage, list rental, and printing, direct mail can be a costly business – if you get it wrong.

It is also worth using this opportunity to test your direct mail campaign. Businesses can think about testing promotional offers and the power of your letter. The best way to avoid an expensive mistake is to test the main aspects of your direct mail campaign well before your mailing letter even hits the postal system.

Summary

Don’t forget that if you are using direct marketing to reach either existing or potential customers, the quality and accuracy of your data needs to be spot on to avoid wastage and get the best possible results, so make sure you invest in data cleansing and quality lists from only the most reputable of sources. Never be tempted to cut corners by using out of date lists or buying in low cost poorly targeted databases.

About the Author

Written by Steve Sellwood of http://www.selectabase.co.uk, one of the UK’s leading independent direct marketing list providers. Selectabase provide a range of marketing lists for business and consumer markets, as well as affordable data cleansing services for your direct marketing lists.

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