Toolkit: Buying a mailing list

Phil H · Posted: 24th May, 2007 7:31 am UTC Post subject: Toolkit: Buying a mailing list

Marketing & PR. Getting customers and keeping them without breaking the bank. (2007) Philip R Holden and Nick Wilde. London, A&C Black.

Toolkit: Buying a mailing list

There are many providers of mailing lists. As you can imagine, some are more reputable than others.

Lists may be offered by the owners themselves or by brokers; increasingly there are websites where you can specify your requirements, see a count of the names and addresses available and even, in some cases, see a sample of the data. Less reliable websites and computer programs have appeared offering lists, particularly e-mail addresses. Treat these with caution.

The price you pay for a list will depend on its source, the complexity of the selection made and the use to which the list will be put, although there is likely to be a minimum quantity/value that can be ordered. It’s cheaper to mail a list once than to have it available to re-mail or to approach in another way, say by phone. However, it is likely that if you have invested time and energy in researching the list, and it works, you may want to use it more than once.

An extensive list of reputable brokers and list owners is available from the Direct Marketing Association through the ‘find a supplier’ service on its website (www.dma.org.uk). Some of these specialise in one industry, such as health or education, and others offer a specialised service for small businesses with low minimum purchase levels.

Buying data is not standardised across the industry so you will have to look closely at what is being offered. You should ask about how the lists are compiled and how often they are updated. Lists consist of subscribers to industry magazines (in which case you can cross check the readership of the magazine) or they may be compiled by telephone researchers; this will give you an indication of the quality of data.

Very often the data on offer is ‘enriched’ by adding information from other sources, such as a company director’s home address, e-mail addresses or figures such as reported turnover or profit. For consumer lists, the added data can be complex and include information such as income, occupation, holiday preferences, hobbies and car ownership.

Many data providers offer extensive profiling services which can compare your existing customers (if you have their details on a computer) with the people and businesses on their database. In this way, you can base your selection of names and addresses on the most important factors and ‘weight’ these to reflect the value of your existing customers and so ‘match’ your best customers first.

The more refined your selection, the more expensive the list becomes. In the early stages of a direct marketing campaign, it’s as well to test several lists and keep records of their performance. You may find that a comparatively cheap list, say the members of a professional association, performs as well as a complex compiled list from a broker.

As with all marketing expenditure, make absolutely sure that you check the return on investment before you proceed: a £2000 list has to perform twice as well as a £1000 list with the same number of names and addresses.

Finally, you should be absolutely clear how you intend to use the data. It will be provided in one of several file formats and adjusting this after it has been delivered may add considerable expense to your campaign. List owners themselves may impose restrictions on their data and you will probably be forbidden from keeping a copy of the list used. The penalties for misusing personal data are heavy. See www.ico.gov.uk/ for guidance as well as the DMA site mentioned above.

Now, please post your comments and experience. Have you had experience buying a mailing list? What kind of service did you get? What kind of results did you achieve?

(c) 2007 Philip R Holden & Nick Wilde