Martin Worldwide’s Mailing List Blog

With all the changes going on with customer demands and expectations, consumer behaviors and preferences, and changing market conditions, rolling out the right marketing campaigns is essential for business success. Over half of the success of a direct marketing campaign is due to having sales leads with the right target, targeting the right audience, and using the right list.

Why Test?
Unlike traditional marketing and advertising, testing is the foundation of direct marketing.  Because of quantitative nature, direct marketing and its elements are very conducive to testing.

Testing is done to learn what works and what doesn’t work with your respective target markets. It is when two or more variations of one variable are compared to one another simultaneously with all other variables the same.

Testing your direct marketing in small groups will help you determine which variables will lead to the greatest success. Once testing is complete, you can roll out your entire campaign based on the most successful test results. Testing takes businesses closer to defining the best campaigns.

What to Test?
There are several variables that have an effect on your purchase and response rates:

The format of the marketing vehicle. Should you mail out a postcard or a letter?

The offer. Are you offering something for free, or a premium conditional upon a sale and/or response?

The target. Are you delivering your target to the right audience?

Color and design. Which set of creative artwork get more response than another?

Subject line of an e-mail. This is the most common place to start the testing of a direct e-mail marketing message.

When to Test
• When you want to improve response/sales
• To improve profitability, cost control, and ROI
• When you want to expand to a new audience or new market
• When considering a new marketing vehicle
• To test a particular demographic variable within your target market
• To test particular timing for delivery of your marketing (seasonality, frequency, etc.)

Tips
• Keep track of your testing.
• Keep testing methods simple.
• The larger the test sample. The more reliable the results.

There are several compelling reasons for hiring a professional mailing list management firm rather than trying to do it yourself. This is true for 98% of all list owners.

First, a professional with a solid track record who has present years developing personal contacts in this highly specialized industry can almost always outsell an in-house operation. It’s not enough to know more about your list than anyone else. You have to know the brokers, the agencies, and the mailers who should be renting it. You have to know which mailers are ordering which types of lists, through whom and when. You have to know how to position your list against competitive properties, how to segment it for maximum effectiveness, how, where, and when to promote it. Pros spend years learning this. You can’t expect the same performance from your secretary, brother-in-law, or that promising intern.

Second, a good list manager can achieve a given level of sales at a lower cost to you than if you do it yourself. The economics of scale apply. When a list manager visits brokers or users of lists on a cross-country trip, at conventions, or trade meetings, he or she can spread selling costs over a number of list properties. Even over the phone, a manager can push more than one list in a single call.

With a few exceptions, the more knowledgeable and more proficient list managers are to be found on the outside. Inside management only makes sense if the people involved are the equal of outside managers, and since good inside managers tend to gravitate outside, the edge here is with outside experience.

Outside costs are predictable. The manager gets a fixed percentage. That fee covers all inside costs. Inside costs can easily get out of line, particularly when list stays level or dips. The budget is a critical factor for inside management; it is a fixed proportion of total revenues using outside management.

Outside list managers usually have better systems for reporting in place.

The outside list manager touches more bases than the inside manager, and can therefore be aware of more pressure points, including mailers who pay slowly, if at all.

Those lists that call for the use of an outside list manager include:
• All lists where economics of scale favor paying part of the costs, not all of costs.
• Virtually any business mailing list.
• Any new list or new concept.
• Any list where the current staff is already overloaded.
• Any list where skilled labor power is not available for inside management.