Marigold Direct is proud to launch DNS Insight, a new email deliverability and creative segmentation tool. Managers of large opt-in email files now have another method to improve the quality of their database. The DNS Insight service validates IP addresses in customer files.

When a customer opts-in to receive email messages, several details are captured: the website where they opted-in, demographics collected via survey questions, the date and time stamp, and the IP address. The IP address is often overlooked as an important data element. DNS Insight looks to change that viewpoint. The IP address indicates the ISP or carrier network that the customer subscribes to. And by periodically testing the status of the IP address, owners of opt-in databases can see if the IP address remains active or not. We have found a strong correlation between inactive IP addresses and inactive emails. For example, if a customer upgrades from a dialup account such as AOL to a cable broadband account like Comcast, there is often a change of email addresses as well. The DNS Insight service can validate that change without sending an email and receiving a hard bounce back. Hard bounces damage the IP reputation of email broadcasters. The last thing a legitimate opt-in email provider wants for their service is to get blacklisted on the multitude of RBL or spam blocking services out there.

An additional benefit of IP Validation with DNS Insight is that the service can flag suspicious records in the customer’s database. During the pre-launch testing period, DNS Insight validated a 6 million record file of USA consumers and found 8,000 records all pointing to the same server in China. These records could have been “opted in” by means of some sort of automated process or bot. Flagging and removing records such as these will only improve the quality and responsiveness of the database.

Improving email deliverability is only half of the DNS Insight solution. Creative segmentation is the other half. DNS Insight will append a variety of new data elements to our customer files, including the fully qualified domain name of each IP address, and the carrier network that the IP address belongs to. The creative segmentation component adds considerable value to the database of DNS Insight customers. Innovative campaigns can be developed targeting specific networks such as Cable, or DSL customers as opposed to Dialup customers. Targeting customers from Educational or Government networks is now also possible. Distinguishing customers based on business or residential networks will prove to be a very valuable segmentation as well.

DNS Insight will work with reputable companies interested in maintaining the highest level of integrity and service. For more information, please visit www.dnsinsight.net

Spam filters can lay waste to a B-to-C email campaign. So can a busy “delete” key. By contrast, the postal service delivers your campaign right into your potential customers’ hands.

Despite the ubiquity of Internet marketing and the rise in postal rates, Marigold continues to see strong demand for its many targeted residential mailing lists. These lists are ideal for catalog campaigns, offers that rely on visuals and brochures, and mailings that include coupons, magnets, calendars, and detailed information.

Our residential mailing lists include broad, high-impact categories, such as:

• Home improvement enthusiasts
• Home office entrepreneurs
• New homeowners
• Newlyweds
• Cable TV buyers
• High-speed internet consumers

In addition, we offer residential mailing lists for highly targeted groups such as mail-order buyers of outdoor recreation products, donors to women’s causes, gardening enthusiasts, and more. (You’ll also find lists that enable your campaigns to target consumers by ethnicity, religion, or language spoke.)

Marigold’s residential lists are regularly updated (usually monthly) to ensure freshness, accuracy, and deliverability. Please contact us to find out more about any of the Marigold lists and for information on using our data resources to create a custom residential mailing list for a specific campaign.

Marigold has just made available several new lists that target consumers by their interests and enthusiasms. Whether it’s pampering for their pets or equipment for their latest fitness regimen, these consumers are in the market for new products and best buys.

An Email List of Pet Owners is a database of pet owners who have opted-in to receive information about buying products and services for one of the fastest-growing consumer groups in the country — our furry friends.

A Mailing List of Truck Owners provides the ideal demographic for reaching a defined segment of US drivers with offers for insurance, gasoline cards, credit cards, audio equipment, and child-safety products.

A Mailing List of Country Lifestyle Enthusiasts puts you in touch with consumers who subscribe to country lifestyle periodicals throughout the United States. This is an ideal audience for marketing products and services in areas including antiques, collectibles, home furnishings and decorations, crafts, cooking, and more.

A Mailing List of Female Weight Loss Enthusiasts is a compiled list of female consumers based on their response to diet and fitness-related mail orders, coupons, surveys and more. Marketers can use this list’s selects (such as marital status and ethnicity) to craft highly targeted campaigns.

A Mailing List of Soap Opera Enthusiasts gives marketers access to an extremely targeted group of television viewers. This list offers numerous selects, including income and ethnicity.

Automotive Interest Consumers Email List provides email access to a database of opt-in email users who have expressed an active interest in cars and everything automotive.

An Email List of iPod Owners is a list compiled from opt-in responses to online surveys. It enables marketers to get their offers in front of media-savvy individuals on the cutting edge of consumer entertainment technology.

Marigold has announced several new mailing lists including a massive database of more than 498,000 new businesses. This fresh postal mailing list has segments that allow you to reach businesses at the 1-month, 3-month, 6-month and 12-month stages of growth. Selects include business/industry type, company size, and state.

Additional new professional and lifestyle lists provide access to these desirable markets:

• Retirees — This list includes segments for recent (3-month and 6-month) retirees, and offers numerous selects allowing you to target your offers.
• Surgeons — This multi-sourced file is perfect for professional offers for medical books, uniforms, apparel, and more.
• Nursing Professionals at Home Address — This list provides access to strong buyers of educational and professional tools, including seminars, videos and books.
• Reach a market with exceptional discretionary income using the new lists Households with No Kids and Double Income Household with No Kids.

Search our complete database of lists, or contact us to find out about our ability to develop custom mailing lists to meet your specific requirements.

Some of the hottest areas in direct marketing — and direct mail — are the emerging ethnic markets. As this article from The CEO Refresher explains, dramatic profitability is in store for those companies that can recognize an ethnic market for their product and appropriately tailor a campaign to reach it.

That’s where Marigold’s newest mailing lists can help. We now offer a full array of lists that allow direct marketers to reach consumers by ethnicity, language, and religion. For the Hispanic market, more than 20 lists are available for consumers by country of origin. All the lists have numerous geographic and lifestyle selects, and can be tailored to match the target audience for your specific campaign.

The new mailing lists include more than 150 ethnic lists, as well as lists representing larger geographic areas such as the Mediterranean and the Near East. You can view counts for 40 of the larger lists here. To inquire about specific lists and the selects available for them, please call or email us.

There’s no question that segmenting your mailing list can increase ROI. You can use segmenting to hone in on the recipients who best match your campaign criteria. Or you can use segmenting the way major catalogs retailers do: segmenting a list and sending out tailored versions of the offer to each segment.

Segmenting a mailing list of existing customers is relatively easy because you have data about them in relationship to your products or services. You know how much they usually spend, how often they make purchases, and when their last purchase occurred.

You can also segment a brand-new list to significantly increase its effectiveness. Here are some of the criteria commonly used to segment a new business-to-consumer list for targeted mailings:

• Income level
• ZIP code (this information can be correlated to lifestyle information for that area)
• Marital status
• Gender
• Children living in the home

Business-to-business lists can also be segmented by various criteria:

• Business size
• Total revenue
• Industry served

Deciding how to segment a list for your campaign is just the first step. The next is to create and test targeted copy for your offer that leverages the information available about the prospects. Just as people pay attention when they’re addressed by their names (personalization), people take notice when an offer shows that the sender understands their interests.

Be sure to call out the customized nature of your offer prominently in headlines or email subject lines to list segments. Instead of a generic headline such as “Announcing our new 2007 cruises,” test headlines such as “2007 lineup includes three new family cruises” (households with children) and “Meet other Tri-State singles on summer weekend cruises” (singles, particular ZIP codes).

For more information on segmenting mailing lists, contact us.

Direct marketers in the telecom and personal technology fields will want to check out Marigold’s current featured list, Wireless Pros: Wireless Cell Phone Subscribers.

This data goldmine of more than 41 million names is the most comprehensive source of cellphone subscribers on the market. It is compiled from sources including providers of ring tone and wallpaper services and marketing campaign respondents who have opted-in to receive information from Marigold partners.

The list is segmented by cell phone service provider, and Marigold can assist you in refining the list with geographic and demographic selects to suit your campaign. Please contact us for more information.

Hot news for all of you marketing telecom services: Marigold’s new mailing list Broadband America, gives direct marketers the unprecedented ability to identify more than 31 million consumers by broadband service provider (ISP).

Broadband America is the ideal list for telecom switching campaigns and for campaigns targeting cable, DSL, or dial-up subscribers. This datacard is rich with information: Selects include phone number, broadband provider, local telecom provider, and more.

Not only is Broadband America the most comprehensive database of its kind, the freshness and integrity of its records is ensured. Some 50 million records are added daily. And, in addition to using industry-standard cleansing techniques for postal data, Marigold has developed a proprietary technology used to test all records for online activity each time the database is rebuilt.

Find out more about Broadband America, and see the list’s segments charted by market share.

It’s no secret that in recent years telecom companies have become some of the most enthusiastic proponents of direct marketing. Competition in the telecom field is fierce, with technological innovations creating endless opportunities to market new services and new equipment to businesses and consumers.

Marigold has become a leader in direct marketing for telecom by developing data and tools that give our customers the competitive edge. We offer a rich portfolio of telecom lists for successful opt-in email, postal direct mail, and phone campaigns. And we provide powerful combinations of selects for targeting lists by geography and telecommunications infrastructure (carrier, central office, NPA-NXX, and more). In addition, we offer free online resources such as the Central Office Lookup Tool and a domain name and IP address geolocator.

Marigold’s telecom-related lists for B2B and B2C campaigns include:

• VoIP Business Prospects
• Small Business Entrepreneurs
• IT-Pros (Marigold offers multiple lists providing access to key IT buyers and decisionmakers)
• Home Office Entrepreneurs
• eManagers: Small Business Technology Buyers
• Broadband Buyers: High Speed Internet Businesses
• Business Cell Phone Users
• Broadband Buyers: High Speed Internet Consumers
• DSL Broadband Buyers
• Cable Broadband Buyers
• Broadband-Enabled Families with Children
• VoIP Consumer Prospects

Our existing telecom mailing lists are just the beginning. With access to extensive data on telecom users, we develop targeted lists to meet the needs of particular customers and campaigns (such as eCommerce Business Owners: No Bricks and Mortar). Please contact us today to find out more about telecom lists.

Your direct mail offer is compelling and your lists target the ideal audience. In short, you’ve taken into consideration the major factors in your control when it comes to increasing response to your campaign.

But what about that big factor you can’t control — the mindset of the recipient? If the person who gets your mailing isn’t in the mood to buy or to “find out more,” your mailer will wind up in the trash. Or your email will go unopened.

The good news is that there are some powerful motivators out there that put consumers in a buying frame of mind. You can’t control them, but you can harness their power to boost response to your campaign. These are the seasonal events: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, summer vacations, back-to-school, and more. To take advantage of these purchasing motivators, time your direct marketing campaigns to coincide with the periods in which these events have people looking to buy.

For instance, now’s the time to implement campaigns with a tie-in to a “back to school” theme. The back-to-school buying season begins this month with high school graduation presents — often major computer purchases for college-bound students. It continues through the summer with everything from school supplies and clothes to dorm furniture, luggage, moving services, and moving supplies. Who to target? Parents of school-age children, grandparents, and college-age teens. And don’t forget the eager audience for time-saving products and services catering to working parents with school-age children.

Seasonal campaigns are an excellent opportunity to evaluate new lists and to apply selects to better target the lists you already use. For your back-to-school campaigns, be sure to inquire about Marigold’s high-quality consumer mailing lists, including College-Bound Teens and Mail Order Buyers of Childrens Apparel.