Mining the Mailing List

There are thousand upon thousand books on marketing advice out there, and several hundred seemingly dedicated to marketing hypnosis. And as I may have said before, it takes a lot of time and energy when one has a business to market it thoroughly. And despite what we are told – hire a marketing professional- many of us choose the road to do-it-yourself-business-ownership for a variety of reasons. This often means spending less time keeping in-tune with what we really want to do - more hypnosis.

After acquiring an intern from a nearby college for the past few months, I see the value in those who know about marketing. Heck, we are hypnotist, not marketers. So, I have been looking at some of her suggestions for potential marketing campaigns.

One in particular is the idea of utilizing a mailing list and doing direct mail advertising. Now mind you I do have my own list, compiled of past clients, referrals, friends, networking acquaintances, and so on. People who do not know about me would be a good start. But not just any mailing list will do. It needs to be one that considers many demographic factors (age, gender, location, etc.). This needs to be compatible with my target audience in mind. Fir instance, if one were to engage in child hypnosis, one would want to market to parents, etc. And also, the more you know about a select audience, the more you can pitch your advertisement to them. Business owners might like public speaking and self-confidence boosters, while new homeowners might need stress relief. DO you get the picture?

A company to look at for such pinpointing in their mailing list would be Martin Worldwide who offers innovated direct mail mailing list. They specifically offer a product called ResponseCom™. This is a specialized database that has been time tested (over a decade) and result-oriented (they should all be this way, no mater who you use...but keep reading and you may see why they seem sincere) . ResponseCom™ offers over 100 demographic and psychographic selects (these help target those whom you want to get message to and those who are likely to respond positively).

Though they do have Fortune 500 companies, which as a small business owner make me a little intimidated, they also realize the potential and needs of the small business world. Therefore they offer several services and programs targeted for those in my shoes. This would be a benefit of there status as one of the largest providers of mailing lists. They have experience with cost-effective services to help us grow our businesses. Plus Martin Worldwide guarantees its data integrity in writing.

As a blogger who enjoys other blogs, it does my heart and mind good to see they do have an office blog as well. It has some reasonable tips and interesting facts that one can try on for size. It adds a touch of the personal that some big business lacks.

And in the long haul, spending a few dollars on a decent mailing list can be a real time and money saver. Printing cost can be pretty intense, so it is a good way to economize in that area.

Anyway, these are some ideas we are floating around here. As always, I would love to hear your experiences with mail list and such.