Mailing Lists
Alert Direct Mail is a recognized list broker. In this capacity we can obtain just about any list available. For some of our customers we have acquired the subscription lists of Gourmet Magazine and the BMG Classical Music Club; for a retail store we found residents within a specific radius of the store location; we secured residents with incomes over $110,000.00 for a real estate company, and businesses with annual revenues over $100,000.00 for a leasing company. We have over 95 million residential and business addresses within our systems. We've even located a list of Quality Assurance engineers, working in a laboratory environment, with budget responsibilities and purchasing authorization. Now that was specialized.
Some ideas to keep in mind when choosing a list:
- Do you need a residential or a business list?
- Is an income level important?
- What geographic area do you want the addresses drawn from?
- Will you need to use the list more than once?
Early in our business, one of our clients wanted to sell a New Jersey Bed & Breakfast inn. We obtained three lists of people interested in owning a B&B. One list was in New Jersey, the other two were in Michigan. The lists were merged, purged of duplicates and restricted to New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. For reasons of security, local addresses were deleted. A single page letter was created by our copy writer. A two-color promotional brochure was included. The outside of the plain, business-size envelope stated, "The one you've been waiting for."
The asking price was $1,200,000.00
Just under 2,300 names were mailed at a postage cost of only $420. There were 24 telephone or email responses. The property was shown to 12 perspective buyers.
Within 10 days of the mailing, three offers were received. Closing occurred 10 weeks after the mailing.
(We can't promise all our customers that kind of success. But the right product or service, combined with the right offer, interestingly presented and sent to the correct market will always generate sales.)
