Page 181 - Duct Tape Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing

area with fewer than one hundred employees, can be acquired from a
host of national list resources, such as InfoUSA. These types of lists
are often available at very reasonable rates.

Lists of subscribers of specific publications or buyers of specific
services and products are also available but generally at substan-
tially higher prices. A publication called the Standard Rates and
Data Service (SRDS) lists more than ten thousand mailing lists of
all shapes and sizes available for rent. It is possible to find lists in
the SRDS of credit card–holding doctors who subscribe to hunting
magazines. Okay, this particular example may not fit the bill, but I
hope you see the potential here.

Mailing lists are sold on a cost-per-thousand basis, and most
list owners have minimum list rental requirements, although I have
found that many will waive the minimum to allow you to test a small
portion of the list.

The Perfect Mailing List

Both the compiled list and the publication or purchaser list have
value, but I believe the perfect mailing list is created by carefully
merging several types of lists. To create your perfect mailing list, start
by getting a list from a source like InfoUSA that meets your very
strict demographic profile of your ideal client. Then find a list from
a magazine or catalog from SRDS that demonstrates a purchasing
or enthusiast behavior that matches your product or service and join
the two lists to find prospects that reside on both lists. Anyone who
appears on both lists is your ideal target. This way you narrow the list
to only the most highly targeted suspects possible.

The trick is to identify some behavior or reason that someone
would be on a certain list that would help better qualify a person for
your offering. (Remember the work we did back in chapters 1 and 2

162