Creating a Successful Mailing List
by Greg Gould, 2010
Picture your ideal customer
Who do you imagine responding to your offer? A great way to start is by studying your current customers. New customers will likely be similar to the people who currently do business with you.
Identify your best customers
Look at your own records-sales slips, invoices, delivery information. These tell you who your customers are, what they buy, how often they shop, and how much they spend. Look for the people who bought from you most recently, most often, and who spent the most money. This is called RFM: Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value.
Understand your model customer
Find out what your best customers have in common. Pay attention to characteristics such as age, gender, income, and where they live. One easy way to do this is to through Eye/Comm's data analysis tools. Utilizing survey research to identify consumers' values, attitudes, and product preferences and combining that with U.S. Census data, we help you to:
- Profile the unique characteristics of your best and most profitable customers.
- Target your selling messages to the right audience at the right time.
- Open new channels to reach your customers and prospects using the methods they prefer.
- Boost response through more specific, personalized offers (as opposed to generic, onesize?fits?all promotions).
- Build loyalty programs that increase lifetime value.
Find more model customers
After developing a comprehensive profile of your model customers, Eye/Comm can find more people who fit that profile, so you can tailor your message to match their needs and interests, and increase the chances that they'll act on your offer.
- Identify and target new prospects most like your best customers.
- Boost your direct response rate.
- Increase your market penetration.
- Dramatically improve your advertising ROI.
Track and analyze
Direct mail advertising is unique because it provides measurable results. By testing and tracking you can determine the most effective lists, offers and creative.
- Mine the best intelligence from your response.
- Update your list.
- Evaluate your ROI.
- Find response trends to improve the ROI for future campaigns.
- Improve your offers and creative to maximize response.
