The absolute best place to find mailing lists and sales leads is in your database of past customers and clients. These in-house lists are responsible for more future sales and contracts than any other marketing method in most cases. However, if you do not want your marketing funnel to run dry, you need to find additional sources of sales leads to pour into it. The answer is to buy or rent targeted mail list and email lists from the best direct mailing list service you can find.

Identify the Best Mailing List Brokerage

The last thing any marketer wants is to spend money and time creating a direct marketing mailer or professional email just to send it out to a long list of obsolete and inaccurate contact information. Not only is this a waste financially, a lot of confusion will surround the experience because you may never know if the males are delivered or not. Since tracking and analyzation are such an essential part of ongoing marketing success, this type of experience will destroy it.

Choose a mailing list broker such as Bethesda List Center who has a track record of providing quality information that is checked for both accuracy and currency. Besides standing behind the mailing lists and sales leads they broker, they also offer plenty of marketing tips and information, list management practices, and even email delivery services.

Once you have identified the best place to get a list from, the next decision requires narrowing down your focus to figure out the best targeted audience to send your marketing message to. Things such as company size, geographic location, the number of employees, yearly net income, and business structure could all be taken into account.

Complete 4 Question Plan to Finding the Best Mailing Lists and Sales Leads

In order to find the best mailing lists and sales leads, ask these four questions before you buy or rent a list from any broker. Each one may require considerable research, long discussions with your marketing and design teams, and brainstorming sessions that help you match your ideal future customer or client with the unique sales position and offer you make through email or postal direct mail.

#1 – What Criteria Do You Use to Build a Targeted List?

A professional list broker should compile their mailing lists based on a responsible set of criteria that takes into consideration the reputation of the source and how accurate it is. Although a list brokerage company may not want to share every aspect of their list procurement plan, they should be able to allay your concerns. For example, knowing how frequently they check each list for accuracy what help a company make a decision about if most mailing addresses can be delivered or not.

#2 – Where Do You Get the Contact Information From?

Many brokers get mailing lists directly from their owners who wish to rent them out to earn extra money for themselves. Other lists are built around association or organization membership records, professional licensing databases, or various regularly-updated professional industry publications. Any supposedly professional list brokerage company who will not give any information about where the contact data was acquired should not be trusted fully. There are unscrupulous individuals out there who do nothing but copy and paste lists of email or postal addresses from old directories or even hack website databases to get them.

#3 – What Steps Do You Take to Ensure Deliverability?

This question focuses primarily on how accurate the source of the contact information is to begin with and how frequently it is checked to make sure it is still current and active. The best direct mailing list service will not wait long to run postal addresses through the change of address databases or send out test emails to track and analyze how many bounce or are returned as undeliverable. A company representative who is interested in direct mail marketing needs to understand that it is impossible to update vast collections of information every day or even every week. There will always be some mailers or emails that get lost or drift out into the ether and never reach their target. This is akin to a tangible goods vendor or receives one or two broken items out of 100. It is part of the direct marketing process. However, the brokerage should do everything possible to minimize this.

#4 — Have Other Marketers Used or Tested This List?

While a list brokerage company should not give you the actual names or identifiable details of companies or individuals who use the mailing lists and sales leads you are interested in before, they could give an indication about how satisfied they work with the experience. Also follow up by asking if that person went on to purchase additional mailing lists or increase their order by a certain quantity.

Specific questions about the demographics, niches, and association connections represented in each targeted mail list and email lists you express interest in should be asked prior to purchasing. Sometimes, the process of finding the best mailing lists and sales leads can be quite extensive. Your best bet is to work with a top-quality list brokerage like Bethesda List Center that understands not only direct mail marketing but also the industries and organizations whose lists they handle.

The Steps After Getting a Targeted Mail List and Email Lists

A large part of the journey to find the best mailing lists and sales leads happens after you already buy or rent a list, design postcard, brochure, or letter and send out 1000 or more. This would be considered a very small test run for large companies and corporations who often send out 5000 or more marketing mail at a time.

If emails bounce or postcards are returned to you as undeliverable, you immediately know that those names and addresses can just be deleted. As responses begin coming in, those leads who took action based on your direct mail or email piece should be moved to an in-house list. The best way to find profit through direct mail is to get people who express interest in your particular offer into the sales funnel as quickly as possible.

The best direct mailing list service provides accurate data that is industry or niche specific, collected in a responsible, respectful, and legal fashion, and that has been tested both in their own company and by other marketers. If you ask the correct questions, track, and analyze all efforts and responses in your own company’s direct mail campaigns, you will have a continuous flow of highly responsive sales leads that can help you expand your business and realize greater returns on any marketing investment you make.