3 Things To Know Before You Purchase Mailing Lists

[KHALID HASSAN]

In traditional 'off line' business, direct mail has proven itself to be extremely effective. Depending on your product, direct mailing campaigns can deliver huge returns on your investment - if you know what you are doing. Gary Halbert's famous Coat of Arms direct sales letter is good proof of this. Today however, the playing field has changed and in came email - one of the revolutions of our time. Today, email marketing is one of the biggest marketing avenues available to virtually any company. If you are looking to purchase mailing lists, you better swap the P.O Box's for '@'s'. Although direct mail marketing and email marketing has much in common, the main benefit of email marketing is speed and automation. One of the most powerful concepts behind mail marketing is that you purchase much more than a mailing list - you purchase customers. When you gain a new customer you can build a relationship with him/her and make multiple offers and multiple sales to them in the future. It is a fact that once someone buys something from you, they are very likely to buy something from you again. It's so much easier to sell to someone who knows and trusts you. So, before you purchase email list, you should keep the following three things in mind to ensure your success. 1. Who Are You Mailing To? Not all lists are created equal. Your success will very much depend on the quality of the leads you purchase. This is especially important when it comes to buying email leads. Many companies out there simply 'harvest' email addresses that mean very little to your business. The key is targeted leads - when you do launch your email marketing campaign you want to do it with highly targeted and qualified leads. Start by drafting a profile of your ideal customer and when you purchase mailing lists, only focus on that 'ideal market'. This will greatly increase your chances of success. It's also important to check on how old the lists are. The best strategy that is only possible with email lists is 'real time' response which allows you to put your offer in front of a potential customer, the minute they opt-in to a mailing list. 2. Will It Damage Your Business? One of the major issues with email marketing is unsolicited mail or 'spam'. We all hate it, yet there are still millions of people doing it. The bottom line is that it's becoming an epidemic and with anti-spam software becoming stricter, you have to be more vigilant in where you purchase mailing lists from. Spamming can really hurt your business in many ways and the worse part is that you may not even know you are doing it. When you purchase email leads you have to make sure that they are opt-in leads, preferably double opt-in which means that the person gives their consent to receive information from you. This is a really good thing as it already qualifies your lead to a certain extent, which makes it even easier to market and sell to them. 3.Will You Make Money? The real key to success with any mail marketing campaign is R.O.I (return on investment). Purchasing mailing lists is not cheap - especially the really good ones, but if you are going to make a decent return on the investment it makes perfect sense. Keep in mind that it is not just the initial sales, but the return value of getting new customers with whom you can build a relationship and sell to for the rest of your life. To maximize your R.O.I it is vitally important to test your campaigns. Start with small campaigns and test various things until you get something that really works. Then, just scale it up and along with that you will scale your profit. There are many companies out there selling mailing lists of all colors and flavors. The important thing is to do your homework, do some due diligence and make informed decisions. Start small and always keep the R.O.I in mind.