One of the best ways to expand your business is to reach out to your customer and let them know about relevant products and services you can offer them. The key word in the previous sentence was “relevant”. Many mailing lists exist out there that can help your business succeed in its direct marketing efforts. You can find many lists of contact information available for sale that can be used for campaigns. But if you are targeting a list that is just a dump of names then you can do more harm than good. Today people are so frequently bombarded with marketing messages that they will get sick of ads they receive in their inbox or mailbox that doesn’t target them. Not only are you wasting your money by sending material to people who aren’t interested but also you are also harming your reputation. This is a sure way to turn off customers and ensure they won’t do business with you in the future. What you need is targeted mailing lists that contain a very specific set of contact information for people who are genuinely interested in your offerings. You should work with a reputable list broker who can help ensure you are getting legitimate lists that express customer’s true intentions so as to make your campaigns effective.

White Paper / Position Paper
A white paper refers to information provided by an expert. The term “white paper” comes from the fact that they are prepared very simple and straight forward– black ink on (usually) white paper, research paper style. The goal of the white paper is to provide meaningful information, research findings, trends, predictions, and positions. White papers give the impression that you are an industry leader or expert.

Special Report
A special report is an article full of information that is of interest to your prospect; especially created to address your prospect’s interests and challenges.

Tool Kit
Tool kits (such as a How-To checklist, an audio CD, a workbook, articles, a directory, etc.) offer information-based tools that make work easier and suggest that something will get done.

Workbook / Tutorial
A workbook or tutorial offers step by step instructions, suggestions, or explanations of a process in their work. As workbooks and tutorials have a high perceived value, they are also used as reference material.

Survey / Survey Results
Prospects like to know that your opinions or positions are based on facts or research. A survey is good, current, research, usually unique to the target market. It is information that could aid in the decision making process for a prospect. Surveys also have a highly perceived value and work well as an offer.

Sweepstakes
A creative and imaginative sweepstakes can be a valuable offer. They key is to make the prize something that interests your prospect and makes them want to enter. Think deeply on this one. You might be surprised at what your prospect would be interested in winning.

Offers you can use:
• Free CD audio
• Free webinar
• Paid webinar
• Meet-and-greet session
• Free report
• Checklist/guide
• Bundled products for discount
• Tickets
• Anniversary gift
• Handbook
• Free kit
• Free consultation
• Free product
• Care package
• Savings certificate
• Save ___ percent and receive four free gifts
• I’ll pay half of your _______ bill, to gain you as a new customer
• Newsletter
• First month free
• Audit/critique

The following are direct mailing offers that don’t work:
• Offers with a long deadline
• Free information with no details
• An offer that has no benefit to your prospect; too much you and not enough them.
• Something that is hard to get or hard to figure out how to get.

House List
The House List is an internal list compiled from information you already have. The list includes people you already know or have had contact with. Typically, this is a list of customers, a list of people who have inquired about your services, or have sent a response to you.

With your best prospect being current customers, your house list represents your best prospect list for selling more products or services to. It will outperform a high-quality purchased or rented mailing list because the people on list already know you, trust you, and have confidence in their business with you.

A house list is built over time and will prove immensely valuable.

Compiled List
The Compiled List is a list of composed, collected, and edited information. The data had been collected or accumulated from several sources and entered into a database program. Sources for this information could be public records (ex: water and public utility bills, voter and vehicle registration lists), public and professional directories (ex: chamber of commerce, trade associations), and even the White and Yellow pages.

The benefit of compiled lists is that they are sourced from high volume directories, which contain important demographic information with database segmentation in them. The challenge, however, is that they lack the quality of being proven direct responders.

Response List
The Response List is a list of people who have responded to an offer. It could be a TV or print ad, infomercial customers, direct mail response, catalog purchaser, magazine subscriber, or free report responders.

Publication List
The Publication List is a list consisting of a publication’s paying subscribers. These lists are good because, like the magazines, they are usually very targeted to their audience. Any publisher, no matter how large or small, is a good source for list rental.

Hotline List
Hotline is a term in the direct marketing business that is used to describe “the hottest, freshest, most recent” members of a list. This list contains information of people who have responded, purchased within the past 90 days. Although some list owners promote their lists as “hotter”, with a monthly or weekly update, the industry standard for a list being “hot” is 90 days.

Membership List
A Membership list is basically a membership roster of organizations, clubs, and associations. These lists are not always available and sometimes difficult to acquire, but you can contact various organizations directly to try to arrange a list rental or purchase.

E-mail List
E-mail lists can be obtained from many of the aforementioned list sources, provided e-mail information was also collected when gathering their data. You can also acquire e-mail addresses yourself by creating content on your website, such as a survey, contest, or free offer, where you can ask for an e-mail address.

Business and Consumer Lists
Business lists reach individuals at a particular business. Consumer lists target people at home. Although the information on these lists can sometimes crossover due to things like people who work from home, the general rule of thumb is to target the place where the service or product will be used.

When you are promoting your business the content is king in terms of how you put the campaign together and the value proposition you are pitching to your customers. You will need to think long and hard about any campaign materials you are sending out to ensure that the customers you are targeting will fully understand the value that you have to offer. Once you have done this though and equally important consideration is in determining who will receive the campaign. A poorly directed campaign will alienate customers and can do a great deal of harm to your business in that you will get a junk mailer status in the mind of many consumers. In addition laws exist against sending junk mail and email and so you could also face hefty fines. This means if you want an excellent return on investment on your campaigns you need very good mailing lists that specifically target customers who will be interested in your products. These lists need to have been well conceived and developed so that you maximize the investment in your advertising campaigns by only reaching out to potential customers. List brokers can help you source high quality lists to ensure your campaigns are successful.

Telemarketing has an incredibly bad reputation due to the many unscrupulous companies that conduct this practice. The big problem with telemarketing is that many telemarketers are very indiscriminate in who they contact and they will essentially phone any number they can get their hands on. They will be very pushy and they will promote products that are totally irrelevant and out of context given that they are simply calling what are little more than random numbers. This is unfortunate as it tends to cloud the value your business can get from telemarketing. You shouldn’t let these unscrupulous telemarketers turn you off from pursuing a campaign directed at a well developed and well targeted list. If you want to conduct B2B transactions over the phone you can do so very reasonably given the customer nature of B2B services. You can contact customers that you know have a high probability of being interested in your services and thus you are actually adding value to them as opposed to just being an interruption. The key to doing this effectively is to have a highly targeted business telemarketing list so that you know the numbers you are calling belong to companies that will legitimately be interested in your offerings.

You will likely spend a lot of your time on conceiving of marketing campaigns. You will need to understand the benefits of your products and services inside out when devising such campaigns and you will need to carefully consider your competitor’s offers when doing this so as to counter any potential advantages they may have over you. You will also have to position your marketing collateral in such a way that it is sent to customers in the right context and presents your potential customers with a very appealing value proposition. None of this matters though if you fail to target the right group of customers with your campaign. The first step to being able to contact the appropriate customers is to have targeted mailing lists. These mailing lists should ideally be accumulated with the customer’s consent and so they should be receptive to receiving messages from you. You want to work with a reputable list broker to make sure you are getting an appropriately targeted and opted-in mailing list in order to reach your target market.

You could have the best marketing message ever, the best vehicle sent out over and over. If the right potential buyer doesn’t receive your message, nothing gets marketed; no one acts. Putting yourself in front of a potential buyer is the key to marketing and selling. No potential buyers? No selling.

The right target audience might be the right segment, the right niche within a segment, or the right people within a niche. If you are marketing to banks, are you marketing to the bank president or branch manager? If you purchased an automobile mailing list, are you going to use it to market to car dealerships or car owners? All of this has to do with having the right target audience for your marketing.

Don’t forget about your current customers as part of your target audience. Even breaking up current customer segments into different targets may be more effective for your marketing!

When looking to purchase automotive lists from a data provider, it is different than other types of lists in that there are legal prerequisites the list must meet. It is important to ask if the automotive data a list provider offers is compliant with The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA).

The DPPA regulates disclosure of personal information in state drivers’ records and restricts the ability of state motor vehicle departments (DMVs) to sell or disclose personal, identifying information without an individual’s consent. There are exceptions for law enforcement, pollution control and other limited purposes. Any use not specifically authorized by the law is deemed “improper.”

Although the law does not ban the sale or disclosure of personal information obtained from DMVs, it imposes penalties on states and individuals if they disclose the information for an improper purpose.

Century List Services’ automotive database is in full compliance with the Shelby Act and DPPA. The Shelby Act applies to data obtained from the state, such as the DMV, etc. This data is not DMV data and is NOT bought from the state. Our information is compiled from many sources and ran through a series of verification processes to capture a 98% accuracy rating. With this type of information and accuracy rating, it is no wonder why it is one of our most popular lists!

Call us now at 877-585-5478 and ask about our Fully Loaded Automobile Database!

Rule #1. Understand Marketing: Marketing is not a science. If it was, every business would be rich and your leads would cost a fortune. Set realistic goals prior to seeking out leads.

Rule #2: Know Your Deal: You must have an idea in your head of whom you want to contact. You must understand what your customer looks like and what drives them. If you don’t know who your customer is or will be, then your leads will be a shot in the dark. Going in blind is what will get you burned.

Rule #3: Research & Ask Questions: When choosing the best business lead provider, you must understand how they work and have trust and faith that they will deliver. Below are the key components to choosing a lead partner.
· How do they get their data? Listen for multiple sources. This is important because it will determine the age of the leads and lists as well as limit the chance of them being sold to your competition.
· How often is their data updated? All of the good lead providers update their data on a quarterly basis. Any less is unacceptable.
· What are their guarantees? If a business lead source is not willing to not stand behind their data, why should you?
· Does your lead provider understand what you do? Do not forget that your business lead provider is your marketing partner. Every list should be put together based on your offer.

Rule #4: Negotiate: You can always negotiate in the business world. However, never forget the age-old rules such as “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. If you find multiple quotes and one source is more than 10% cheaper than a competitor, without a promotion, run away. The rule of thumb is “good leads are not cheap, cheap leads are not good”. Keep in mind, to generate a good business lead list takes a lot of money and time. Your lead provider’s quote should reflect this. If not, there is something wrong.

Rule #5: Execute: Work your business leads & lists. If you have a list of 10,000 records and you only call through 500, you cannot make an accurate assessment to its success. Sometimes the best part of the drink is at the bottom, same with business leads. There is gold in there, your job is to contact them and guide them down the path of mutual agreement.

Follow these rules above and you will achieve success when purchasing business leads for you and your sales team.