Make special offers to get Inactive customers back as Current customers.
So far we talked about mailing lists theta you generated from your own efforts. There are also lists you can mail to the were generated by the efforts of others, Depending on the source, these can be very profitable lists, or they can be a big waste of money. That’s why you TEST them before blowing your whole marketing budget!
If you have a product that complements someone else’s, you may be able to arrange a joint venture mailing with them. As an example, say you offered a biweekly payment service formortagage holders you convince a mortgage or real-estate company to enter into a venture whirs they mail your offer to their customer list with cover letter from them extolling the virtues of your service. This accomplishes two things:
More customers OPEN the envelope because they recognize he name- it’s their mortgage company, so who would throw than away without looking at it? (Okay, I know we out all like to pretense didn’t have a mortgae, but we know better than to try.)
Once they open it, they get a glowing recommendation fromsomeoe they trust and did dustiness with before- a recommendation YOUR service!
After all costs of mailing are paid, you split the remaining profit with yurt partner. Sure, your profits per sale aren’t as high, but you get a lot more sales then if you sent your offer without that trust-building cover letter.
If works the other way too. If someone else has a product that complements YOURS, WHY NTO ENTER A JOINT VENTURE JWITH THEM? They take all the risk associated with the mailing, you have nothing to lose. Mk sure they have a quality product an excellent customer service, since you don’t want other company’s shortcomings to reflect badly on you.
Now, if you absolutely must, you can mail to cold lists. These are “buyer’s lists” that you rent from list broker. If you were selling a CD Cleaner Kit of instance, omit be interested in purchasing a list of byres of CDs from the Columbia CD Club or, if you’re selling a video course o how to fly-fish, you might want to rent the names of subscribes to Field and Stream magazine.
The better you can match the previously purchased product to your won’t better the list will work for you. If you have a $75 item, you will probably have better results with a list of people ha bought a $ 100 item in the pas than with a list of people that bought a $19 item.
If you’re going to rent a list, you need to become intimately familiar with the Standard Rate and Data Service (SRDS) publication Direct Marketing List Source. This resource has thousands of listing sin over 200 categories. These categories are listed in the Reference / Resource Chapter, just looking at them may give you some grate ideas for your own marketing!