The Mailing List

On Wednesday, I told you how I identified my ideal client. Now that I had some idea who bought the Art of John French, I needed to figure out how to find more of them. So I looked into buying mailing lists.
   You can buy a mailing list from many different companies. There are people who do little more than sift through data bases, subscription lists, public records, and the like compiling list upon list. Then they sell the information to needy marketers like you and me. Some lists are more costly to purchase, but they're better updated and more finely tuned.
     I wasn't planning a real big campaign, so I went to VistaPrint.com.  They have a base list for real cheap. Don't waste your money on this list! VistaPrint allows you to chose more specific criteria for a few pennies more per name. You can focus your targeting to get the kind of people you want. Spend the little extra to fine tune this list. 
   First, you decide how many people you want. I chose 150 names and addresses. Then you can decide on a geographical location. You filter by zip-code, city, state, including anyone within a specific radius from that place. So I typed in 49855, Marquette, MI's zipcode, with a 25 mile radius. That gave me names in Ishpeming, Negaunee, some suburbs and locations in between. 
   You can specify what income level you want to target. I targeted people making more than me, but not too much. My clients weren't millionaires. I specified young and middle aged people, from mid-thirties up to their early fifties. I targeted home-owners, because I foolishly presumed that a renter wouldn't invest in or decorate with art.
    I found that my targeting was too narrow. There weren't enough records to complete my order. So I opened up the age group to mid-twenties to mid-sixties. I also decided to include renters. A renter making the money I was targeting was going to love his home, whether it was owned or leased.
   Now I had my 150 names and addresses. I paid for the list, and they emailed me a file. I wasn't satisfied to just send my marketing to the list without knowing something about the people, so I sat down and Googled every name on the list.
   It was well worth the extra effort! I found out that some were doctors, others were lawyers. Some were teachers and professors. Many were community organizers of some sort. I was able to further personalize the mailings.
   Other reasons the extra search was a good idea: I also found that some folks had moved from the address I had on the list. One poor fellow was dead. I'm glad I didn't insensitively send a postcard to his widow.
   I narrowed my list down to about 75 to 100 strong prospects. Now all I had to do was send them something that would speak to them.