News
 11
Top Questions to Ask Before Renting a B2B Mailing
List
By Alan Sharpe
If the most important part of any
business-to-business direct mail package is the
list, how can you be sure that you have a good list
before you drop your money (and your reputation) in
the mailbox?
Answer: Ask the right questions before you rent that
list.
1. Who is on the list, exactly?
Knowing makes all the difference. So make sure you
can select names by job title or function.
2. What is the source of the list?
Is the list a compiled list, where names and
addresses are compiled into a list from directories,
newspapers, trade show registrations and other
public sources? Or is the list an opt-in list (such
as subscribers to a particular trade publication, or
buyers from an online store)? Lists of names that
are compiled from phone books and directories
usually age more quickly than names from opt-in
lists and usually produce more undeliverable mail.
3. Are the names on the list known buyers?
The best B2B lists contain names of business people
who have bought your product or service or one like
it, regardless of how they bought it (online, by
mail, retail).
4. How recently did they buy?
In the trade, we call this recency. Prospects who
bought a product or service like yours recently are
better prospects than ones who purchased years ago.
5. How often do they buy?
We call this frequency—how often someone buys.
Naturally, someone who buys your product or service
often is a better prospect than someone who buys
less frequently.
6. How much do they spend?
We call this monetary value, and it’s the third
component in the standard test of mailing list
quality—recency, frequency, monetary value. Buyers
who spend the most are the best prospects for your
mailing.
7. Are the people on the list “direct-mail
responsive?”
Sometimes a list owner or list broker will know if
the names on her list respond to direct mail offers.
A good example would be a catalog merchant who would
know the percentage of names on his list who buy
through the mail.
8. How fresh are the names?
Some business-to-business lists decay at a rate of
25 percent a year. In other words, at any given
time, 25 percent of the names on a given list will
be incorrect. Ask your list owner or list broker how
often they update their list.
9. When was the list last cleaned?
List owners “clean” their lists by comparing them
against the postal service’s National Change of
Address file. Ask how often this is done.
10. How often is the list rented?
If the list is rented often, it is likely a good
list (but one that contains names of prospects who
may have been inundated with offers like yours). If
the list is rarely rented, it is either no good or
it contains a highly specific group of prospects
that no other business except yours wants to mail to
(not likely).
11. Who else rents the list?
Do your competitors rent the list? See if you can
find out!
---- Alan Sharpe is president of Sharpe Copy, Inc. (
www.sharpecopy.com ), a B2B direct mail
copywriting agency.
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