The 3 Vital Elements of Successful B2B Direct Mail, Part 1 Your List

Posted: January 17th, 2011 by Suzanne Stock 0

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To achieve maximum results from your B2B direct mail campaigns, it is vital that you have three elements properly covered:

1/ Your List

2/ Your Offer

3/ Your Creative

Get this right and the success of your B2B direct marketing campaigns will be a foregone conclusion.  

We’ll begin with your data list.

Unlike mass media advertising, direct mail enables you to target your prospects with pinpoint accuracy. Working with the right data list will enable you to eliminate virtually all advertising waste.

Data lists generally comprise information gathered from diverse sources including trade directories, surveys, conference delegates, trade shows, exhibition attendees, etc, etc. Lists may be rented as a whole, or they may be segmented to target specific prospects. If, for example, your perfect B2B prospect is an SME electronics manufacturer who employs from between 500 and 3,000 people with a South East England post code, it should be perfectly possible to obtain such a list. Obviously, the more specific you become with your requirements, the shorter the list will become, but that’s not always a bad thing because it means you are only targeting viable prospects.  This is why it is so important to profile your best existing customers: the more you know about them the better able you are to obtain data lists to successfully target future customers. Your aim when profiling should be to clone your perfect customer.

However, as with any unfamiliar purchase, buying data can be fraught with pitfalls. What are you buying? Is it all that it’s cut out to be? This is why it is critical that you find a bona fide data provider with a proven track record.  A good data provider will also give you their honest judgement to save you from making expensive mistakes. Tell them as much as you can about the service or product you want to market and they’ll recommend or compile a relevant, current data list which exactly matches your needs. A legitimate provider will also be able to tell you how and when the data was gathered and give you a full break-down description of the list content.

And finally, don’t forget to focus on building and marketing to your own in-house list.  This is vitally important, especially if you’re in an industry that typically doesn’t retain customer details, because in all likelihood it will give you the edge over your competitors. Neglecting to build an effective customer database can be a costly oversight, yet many businesses still fail to contact their customers once they’ve walked out of the door.  Make a point of collecting customer names, addresses, email details and phone numbers at every opportunity. It’s money in the bank!  Your next step is to consider your offer…  

Next time – part 2: Your Offer.