In direct mail marketing, there are three main leverage points to increase profits: improve the response rate, increase the sales price of the item, or decrease costs. While you can certainly take steps to tackle response rates and price testing may not be a bad idea, decreasing costs is perhaps the easiest to tackle. It offers an immediate impact on the marketing budget that even the grouchiest bean counters acknowledge. Here are three steps to saving money on your next direct mail campaign that you can do immediately.

1. Improve mailing list hygiene. Every returned piece of mail costs the company postage, printing and mail house fees. If you’re using a house file, be sure that your mailing house or a list broker runs it against the NCOA list, or a list of people who have recently moved, so that you mail to their new address. If you’re mailing to similar lists, such as two competing magazine subscriber files, merge and purge the lists against one another to avoid duplicate mailings. Be sure to ask your mailing list broker or processing service to have your list run against a file of recently deceased people so that you do not mail to people who absolutely cannot respond to your offer…or anyone’s offer.

2. Check your creative against the U.S. Postal Service Domestic Mail Manual. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) frequently updates the domestic mail manual, the Bible for direct mailers. It’s a free book available online in PDF format that guides direct mailers in every aspect of preparing their mail for postal mailing. Check your creative – envelopes, catalogs, self-mailers and postcards – against their guidelines. Be sure that you pieces fall within the established guidelines and that your creative team designs them to maximize discounts.

3. Work with your printer and ask questions. If you use a particular paper stock because that’s what your company always uses, a change may be in order. Ask your printer if any comparable stocks are available on the floor. He may have remnants or open cases he can use of a similar paper that can decrease costs. Or perhaps he knows of another client that purchases the same paper, and you can purchase together at near-wholesale costs if you know the number of mailings you plan to do in one year. Great printing companies act like marketing partners, working with you on your campaigns to help you achieve your marketing goals.

Direct mail continues to be a viable channel for all businesses. Tune up your marketing programs and try these three simple steps today.

SIC code mailing lists are the surest way to reach potential buyers in a particular field of business. Only a small percentage of the executives and managers of any given industry will attend a conference or subscribe to a trade journal; a much larger percentage will be represented in Marigold’s B2B lists.

Who takes advantage of SIC code mailing lists for their campaigns?

• New businesses looking for an affordable way to introduce their products and services to potential buyers
• Businesses expanding to new markets (introducing a commercial version of a product that has been successful with consumer audiences, for instance)
• Businesses introducing a new product that has appeal to industries beyond those they currently serve
• Businesses selling locally that are ready to expand their campaigns into a regional or national market

You can find out more about the hundreds of SIC code mailing lists available using Marigold’s SIC Code Lookup tool. Use it to browse the lists alphabetically, or to search by SIC code or keyword. You’ll find counts for lists and for sub-sets of those lists, along with extensive descriptions of each SIC code.

Any SIC code mailing list you choose can be refined (by applying selects for state, ZIP code, company size, and more) to target exactly the audience you want to reach.

Contact us for more information about SIC code mailing lists, including data recency, and how particular lists have performed for other clients.

For the the catalog industry, the all-important gift-giving season is just around the corner. Catalogs are in design, printing dates are scheduled, and mailing lists are being compiled.

Nearly every large and mid-size company in America gives holiday gifts. Internal gift-giving can range from clever, company-specific party favors to substantial “thank yous” to key players. Gifts to external clients range from basic items given out by sales staff to their accounts, all the way to truly lavish gifts sent from senior managers to their peers in client and partner organizations.

If you are currently selling items popular with corporate-gift givers, consider enhancing your 2007 holiday gifts campaign with Marigold’s proven Corporate Gift Buyers list. The list provides access to more than 600,000 authorized purchasers in the U.S.

Marigold’s list can be refined using a variety of selects. They include: business/industry type, company size, job function/title, state, and zip code. We can help you work with these and additional selects to refine a list that will reach exactly your target audience. Whether you are a national retailer aiming for Fortune 500 buyers, or a regional company looking to reach the right people in the organizations near you, this list means “Happy Holidays.”

Where do direct mail lists come from?

When direct marketers move beyond their own customer lists and begin renting mailing lists, they find a variety of sources to deal with. Here’s a quick guide to the three main types – list owners, list managers and list brokers.

List owners. Retail companies have customers’ data from subscriptions, surveys, and purchases, and many of these companies rent lists of the names and addresses to third parties; these lists are known as response lists. (Customers must give permission before their email addresses to be rented to third parties). Lists are also available from data warehouses, companies that compile massive databases of information from public records (real estate records, political donations); lists from these data firms are called compiled lists.

List managers and list brokers. Many list owners rely on a third-party to do the marketing, sales, and customer service for their direct mail lists. A list manager typically represents a narrow, focused group of related lists from specific owners. A campaign that wanted to access the subscribers of a particular magazine, for instance, would be dealing with the list manager who represents that magazine’s publisher. Data warehouses are more likely to use in-house list managers.

List brokers, such as Marigold, are similar to real estate agents. They provide to access to a wide range of lists from a wide range of owners. Of course, list brokers, like real estate agents, often have specialties in particular verticals. When talking with a list broker, be specific about the characteristics of the list you want. Their job is to be on top of what’s available in the broad field and to know how lists are performing for other customers.

New to renting direct mail lists? Please browse the Marigold Resources and take a look at our quick guide “How to Rent Mailing Lists” to find out more.

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.

The folks over at Melissa Data want everyone to know what five questions to ask when testing a list. The answers to these questions will insure that you have the best possible experience with your list broker and come up with a highly targeted and effective list.

MarketingProfs.com points out that even poorly-done email campaigns can generate a decent ROI. So think what you could do with really top-notch email marketing! This article explains in detail how to demonstrate to your CEO that a larger investment in email marketing can generate a higher return.

DMNews reports that the USPS is conducting tests to better handle “slim jims,” or letter-sized catalogs. These narrow booklets are becoming increasingly popular because, under the new postage rates, they are less expensive to send than traditional-sized catalogs that mail at the more expensive rate for “flats.” After the testing is concluded, specifications for the “slim jims” are expected to change, so direct marketers planning to use this format in upcoming campaigns should follow USPS news closely.

BtoB Magazine offers valuable reminders about the pitfalls of harvesting email addresses without permission (or using harvested email addresses obtained from third parties). Harvested lists violate federal CAN-SPAM regulations. The legal alternative is to use opt-in email lists — keeping in mind that even those must be used in specific ways that comply with CAN-SPAM.

What could be better than getting your B2B direct mail offers to the right audience? And what could be easier than using Marigold’s online Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Lookup tool to locate the perfect B2B list?

Just as libraries use the Dewey Decimal System to organize books by subject, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission set up the Standard Industrial Classification codes to organize the corporate business information it reviews by business type. (For example, prefix “35” signifies Industrial and Commercial Machinery and Computer Equipment, while the prefix “83” indicates Social Services.)

The SIC Lookup tool lets you search Marigold mailing lists by SIC code number or keyword, or browse an alphabetical list of SIC titles. When browsing, you’ll find top-level lists and address counts for each list; then you can click through to see sub-sets of the list and their counts.

Studying the SIC codes and the many associated lists available from Marigold can give you new perspective and new ideas for targeted campaigns in which you can closely match an offer to a highly qualified audience. Call us to find out more about how our clients are using SIC information to increase the effectiveness of their B2B campaigns.

What do you do when the existing mailing lists you see at Marigold and other brokers don’t seem to match up with your needs to reach a highly specific audience? Tell us!

Marigold is the industry leader in developing custom mailing lists for exactly this situation. Custom mailing list solutions will save you from wasting time and money mailing to lists that only partially meet your criteria. Many of our clients have found a custom mailing list to be a highly affordable solution.

Here’s how the custom-list process works: Call us so we can talk about your specific needs. Marigold has access to massive datafiles from which many of our targeted lists are built. We can research these databases in a matter of hours, pull up addresses based on your specific criteria, then start building a custom list just for your campaign.

In the first part of the process, we’ll provide you with list counts — the total number of addresses that meet your special criteria — and mailing licensing options for the list. There’s no cost for this research. From there, we’ll expand or refine the data to align with your campaign budget and scope. (For instance, if the list seems too large, you might want to focus on a particular segment for an initial campaign.) We’ll then work with you on the testing of your custom list, and carry out whatever additional refinements you need.

Custom lists have made all the difference for several of our clients. In one case, the list the client asked us to build was such a winner that it was added to our featured lineup: eCommerce Business Owners: No Bricks and Mortar.

We love client success stories, and we’re particularly proud of the ones related to the many custom lists we’ve developed. We look forward to working with you to create custom lists that take your campaigns to the next level. Contact us to find out more.

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.

Reacting to recent New York Times articles about list-based campaigns that targeted the elderly with fraudulent offers, the Direct Marketing Association has reminded its members to adhere to its guidelines for “responsible use of marketing data for legitimate business purposes.”

Our clients can be assured that Marigold abides by these guidelines, designed to prevent fraudulent direct mail offers. The DMA asks list brokers to:

• Keep on file a copy of the script, e-mail or print promotion used for a client’s campaign.
• Monitor mailings (via decoy addresses added to the list) to make sure that the list is used only for its appropriate purpose.
• Have a written agreement with the client that makes clear the purpose and scope of the list’s use.

We’re happy to say that it’s been our experience that our clients, many of them established Fortune 500 companies, are aware of these guidelines and conduct their campaigns well within the standards set by the DMA. If you have any concerns or questions about use of a Marigold list for a particular campaign, please contact us for more information.