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.

The list expert has all of the following business list sources at his or her command. Some of these are excellent sources and are worth using or testing; others are not. It pays to get expert help.

Directories
Business and classification. These directories report on businesses by industry, market, state, community, and usually include names, addresses, personnel (by name and title), and some demographic data, which can include the size of company, number of employees, telephone number, and products sold or professions employed

Telephone book classifications. There are over 4700 separate local classified directories published in America that have formerly been compiled by several major compilers into a universe consisting of virtually all businesses, institutions, and offices of professionals. This universe includes over 13 million individual records, about 7.5 million independent establishments, and over 3500 separate classifications. Today, only one firm utilizes the classifieds (or Yellow Pages) in this way.

City. There are several thousand city and local directories, many of which provide the only or main source of occupational data with at-home addresses.

Rosters. These include membership rolls of affinity groupings such as associations, societies, clubs, industry leaders, and so on.

Trade Show Registrants
Trade show registrants are of two types– those who register at individual booths at a given show, with a specific interest in a particular product or source, or, more likely, those who register for the trade show itself, a listing of whom is later published by the trade show manager, coded according to such functions as sales, engineering, finance, design, plus a means to select or omit students, librarians and the like.

Attendance Rosters
Some of the best small lists available are of attendants of meetings, seminars, or shows. If a meeting is worth attending for you or one of your people, it stands reason the list of all attendees can be a valuable list source.

Magazine Publishers
There are a couple of thousand industrial magazines that cover one hundred classifications. Most of the publishers now rent names of their subscribers or recipients.

Newsletter Publishers
There are thousands of newsletters circulated in America. All but a small number serve individual specialized business markets. Those which make their lists available for mailing usually work on an exchange only policy.

Multiple Magazine Master Files
Virtually every publisher of three or more magazines offers an unduplicated master file of all recipients.

Business Public Data Banks
There are several lists of names ranging from millions of executives that are compiled lists, mail order buyers, and magazine recipient files.

Dun & Bradstreet
In addition to providing about 70 million of this country’s 8 million business establishments, D&B also makes names available of multi million dollar executives, business owners, doctors, lawyers, and insurance agents.

Standard & Poor
This is the key directory to major manufacturers, which lists most of the 45,000 largest companies in America with 250,000 executives by name and title.

Business Mail Order Buyers
There are over 600 known mail order buyers that sell to other businesses by mail, primarily by catalog. They can be selected by catalog.

Compiled Business Mail Order Buyers
Direct media has combined a number of business mail order lists into a data bank of known mail order buyers. The list totals at least 2.5 million and is selectable by SIC classification.

Specialized Sources
While there are multiple sources for almost every classification, there are specialists (both compilers and publishers) who have established themselves as primary sources for given classifications, including: banks; libraries; schools and school teachers; colleges and college professors; nurses; hospitals; lawyers; dentists; stock and bond brokers; and advertisers found in magazines.

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.

When creating headlines for your direct mail piece, it must sell your product or service, or you’ve wasted the majority of your investment.

The job of a headline is to grab attention, appeal to the reader, communicate benefits, and introduce you immediately.  The headline should motivate, regardless of whether it generates excitement or fear; as long as it generates some emotion that motivates the reader to continue reading; it’s doing its job. Headlines are the first, and often the only, impression you have to make on a prospect.

There are many techniques to writing headlines, but they usually come back to copy that focuses on the benefit(s) that you offer that no one else does; your competitive advantage.

Here are some tips for a more compelling and stronger headline:
• Think of your headlines as being news.
• Use words that sound important and valuable.
• Use quotation marks around the headlines.
• Use upper and lower case letters; not caps.
• Use benefit- and action-oriented words.
• Be extreme and outrageous yet compelling.
• Pique curiosity.
• Move the reader to the body copy.
• Reveal mistakes.
• Be short and sweet in the number of words in your headline.
• Use numbers to quantify your promise and to convince and emphasize.
• Highlight an advantage.
• Make an appeal to an emotion.
• Make a comparison.
• Reveal a secret or insider information.
• Relate to your products or services.
• Ask a question.
• Identify your prospect’s biggest challenge or area of pleasure, and address it.
• Make a promise or recommendation that addresses challenge or desire.
• Use emotional motivators.
• Converse with the prospect in a one-on-one conversational tone.

Everyone at Martin Worldwide would like to thank each and every one of our customers for their business this year. We wish you a happy holiday and continued success in 2008!

Martin Worldwide, Inc. sponsors Hispanic Business magazine’s 17th Annual Entrepreneur of the Year ceremony.

Los Angeles, CA– Martin Worldwide will serve as a sponsor of the 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year Awards Gala. The Hispanic Business magazine event, to be held November 8, 2007 at the Marriott Downtown in Los Angeles, honors the achievements of U.S. Hispanic entrepreneurs.

“Martin Worldwide has a strong Hispanic client base. It was natural to partner with an organization like Hispanic Business magazine that not only chronicles the trends of the Hispanic business community, but is also an active participant. We are proud and excited to be a sponsor of an event that recognizes the contributions of the U.S. Hispanic entrepreneur.” says Johnny Guerrero, Major Account executive for Martin Worldwide.

Martin Worldwide is one of the largest and most successful data corporations in the nation, offering customized mailing lists, telemarketing lists and sales leads to small business and Fortune 1000 clients, including many in the Hispanic business community. Utilizing over a decade of experience, knowledge, and database acquisition expertise, Martin Worldwide possesses an extensive database of 290 million consumers and 14 million U.S. businesses.

For more information on Martin Worldwide and its mailing list products and services, please call (888) 694-5478, or visit us at http://www.martinworldwide.net/ (En español, http://www.martinmundial.com/).

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You prayed.  We answered. Business Leads: The Answer for your Flourishing Company

Is your calendar empty with no sales calls to make?  Then the time has come for you to seriously think about business leads, as utilizing these kinds of leads is a way to grow and cultivate your company quickly and an easy way to increase your ROI.

We at Martin Worldwide can provide you with business leads to help build your company.  We use our depth in knowledge of direct marketing to help you find new prospects and customers.  Turn your business into a profit mecca by allowing us to work with you to produce measurable marketing results that you can only dream of.

Imagine how much time and money is saved by purchasing a business lead list for a specific marketing campaign, a particular product, or an available service.

Business Leads are comprised of, but not limited to, the business name, key contact’s name, address, and phone number of a business.  Using such demographics as the business’s length of time in business, number of employees, and revenue (all of which are also included in the business leads list) can help you further qualify your prospect.

Our larger than life business leads database has over 15 million businesses, with more than 50 selects available.  With industry-specific data, our business leads can help you reach your audience more precisely and effectively by allowing you to market to specific SIC codes, geographical locations, sales volume and so much more.  The information in this database is exclusively compiled by Martin Worldwide, your #1 source for any type of lead.  Our professionally trained list advisors will guide you to reach your perfect target audience.

Using business leads is a win-win situation.  The advantage of these leads is that you can make sure your customers meet your criteria with the given information and because of this, the conversion rate and sales ratio is usually higher than that of cold calls.

Contrary to popular belief and prevailing notions, business leads work for any and all sorts of businesses, including insurance agencies, medical facilities, educational institutions, real estate offices, and mortgage companies. In fact, studies show that business leads are becoming more and more popular, especially for service centered businesses.

Martin Worldwide’s business leads will provide you with larger counts, greater accuracy and a higher response rate for your direct mail or telemarketing campaigns.
 

For over a decade, Martin Worldwide has compiled and maintained the largest, most comprehensive and accurate consumer database available on the planet! Our consumer database, comprised of over 290,000,000 records and over 200 different filters, gives us the ability to provide the perfect list for your unique marketing needs.

Some of the most popular selects on our consumer database include:

- Geography
- Age
- Income
- Gender
- Marital Status
- Presence of Children
- Head of household
- Interests/Hobbies
- Purchasing Behavior
- Mortgage Information
- Length of Residence
- And much more.

Our consumer database is kept current by quarterly updates to ensure each list you purchase will be the most complete, comprehensive, and up-to-date list available in the marketplace. Martin Worldwide licenses data from a wide variety of compilers to guarantee you receive the most complete and multi-sourced consumer database. This gives you a much-needed competitive edge on your direct marketing, as most other list companies traditionally use one source to compile their data.

One of the biggest advantages of using Martin Worldwide for your consumer database needs is that we know your industry.  Our experienced list agents speak daily with salespeople and executives in industries ranging from mortgage, real estate, insurance, home improvement, retail, wholesale, and many more.  With our knowledge of what list criteria are working for your industry, you can be sure that our consumer database will come tailored to target a market segment that is most likely to buy your products or services.  Our experience and the quality of our consumer database help you affect what you care most about in your marketing campaign… your profit.

Let Martin Worldwide prove to you why everyone from the smallest family owned businesses to Fortune 500 companies trust us for their consumer database needs.

If you are in the market for a consumer marketing list, you’ve come to the right place.

Martin Worldwide….#1 resource for a consumer database in the nation!

How to Select the Best Business Leads

If you do B2B sales and you want to take an active approach to growing your revenue, then using Martin Worldwide to obtain some business leads is an excellent way to go. Though the List Advisors at Martin Worldwide can help you find the best Business Leads for your company, here are a few things that will help you ensure your marketing success.

1) Determine your method of contact. You can get in touch with your business leads by mail, phone or email. Find out what your target market would respond best to and plan on using that direct marketing approach.

2) Know your industries. If you know what industries buy your product the most we can target just those industries and therefore your response rate should be much higher than just blanketing all verticals. The most common form of selecting industries is by SIC or Standard Industry Codes.

3) Pick a company size. If you can’t work with really large companies or even really small companies, then decide on a size of business that would be your best prospect by either number of employees or sales revenue and use that to target your best business leads.

4) Choose a business start date. The year a business was started could very well be important to your campaign, so be sure to keep it in mind when selecting your prospect list. Martin Worldwide even provides a daily updated new business phone connect file that is the freshest, newest businesses in the country.

5) Get the right Format. Lastly establish the format that you’d like to receive your data in. The most common and most versatile format in the industry is MS Excel. It may, however, be best to get your data formatted for labels or even printed on labels and sent to you.

Be sure to ask your List Advisor on suggestions if you are not sure on any of the above selects and they can help you find the best business leads for you!

Your Martin Worldwide business leads are the most targeted, up-to-date and accurate leads on the planet. However, your business leads are only as good as your business-to-business campaign. Have you set proper goals for your campaign and are those goals attainable and measurable? Remember that purchasing the best business leads are only half of the marketing story!

Before going after those businesses, make sure that you have adequately answered the following questions:

Objective

What percentage of new business are you looking to acquire to meet your revenue goals? Are your new business leads specific to your target market?

Determine how many qualified B2B business leads are needed to meet these revenue goals. What response rate is realistic?

How many sales are needed to meet your minimum objective?

Competitive Advantage

How is your sales pitch crafted to influence the key decision-maker of the business?

Are you prepared to answer the question ‘why do we need your product/service?’

How does your product or service beat the competition in terms of price, value, performance, and positive ROI for your customers?

Testing

Did you send a copy of your mail piece to yourself as a test-run? Would you open it? Would you be attracted to the offer?

Would you react positively to the sales pitch that your salespeople are using? Your business leads can’t sell your product for you… they can only get your foot in the door!

Analytics

What does the term “qualified business lead” mean to you? Do you have a system in place for qualifying and measuring the response rate of your campaign?

Your Martin Worldwide business leads are a valuable product. Are your salespeople accountable for their use and recycling of their business leads?

Are you running sales reports daily, weekly and monthly?

Are you flexible? Are you willing and ready to alter your pitch, packaging or do whatever it takes to make the sale?