When it comes to marketing to certain industries, association lists and direct mail is a particularly effective form of marketing because it gets your message in front of people who are highly motivated to focus on new products and services that pertain to their career. When contact lists are divided by certain demographics such as age, location and buying habits, the audience for your postcard or letter is not as highly targeted to your offer. Association lists help get your message in front of the business decision maker that can act on it promptly.
Association Lists
What are the three main benefits of the association lists that you would not find with other collections of contacts?
1 – Membership in any association requires either signing up for it or meeting specific criteria. For example, in the medical industry only x-ray technicians who are licensed to do so by the state would be included in an association of radiography practitioners. This results in a collection of contact information, possibly both email and postal, that includes people in a very specific niche. This allows your direct mail services marketing team to come up with a targeted mailer that will be more effective and increase your ROI.
2 – An association list direct mail collection of contact information allows you to sidestep all of the networking and schmoozing at industry conferences and meetings in order to get people’s names and addresses. In the person communication can be greatly beneficial for a business targeting a specific industry, but is simply impossible for many marketers who are either logistically constrained by distance or cost or who would not be allowed into the conferences anyway.
3 – The goal of any direct mail services is to get an effective message and call to action in front of exactly the person who is most likely to act on it. When you use an association list to send that targeted contact to, you are getting it in front of the business decision makers who are in the best position to buy or recommend your product, sign up for your newsletter or organization or make a hiring decision for whatever services you are. With a direct contact to the association member, you do not need to worry about gatekeepers or getting past layers of assistants before reaching your target.
Association Membership
Despite these and other benefits of association list direct mail, they are not the best choice for all marketing efforts. In industries such as medical and engineering, association membership is popular and helpful. If you are targeting to a more specific niche or a very different type of customer, it may be better to choose different criteria for your contacts.
Sending to a List of Professional Organizations
In the end, associations provide an automatic knowledge that the people who are members are directly affiliated with and interested in the subject. For direct mail marketing, this can greatly improve your chances of converting a simple postcard or email into a sale.
