Have you selected your mail lists for your holiday marketing campaigns? Every business has unique needs when it comes to picking out a mail list. It’s important to select the best type of data list for your campaign, budget, and timeline in order to meet your marketing and sales goals. Three types of mail list include straight selects, enhanced, and modeled. Let’s look at the benefits and limitations of each one.
Straight Select Mail List
What is it?
A straight select list is a standard mail list. To order, you select a radius around a location or choose zip codes where you want to pull records from. The addresses are then narrowed down by a few demographics like income, age, gender, ethnicity, and net worth. If you do not have a customer data list or would like to target prospects, this is a solid solution for your direct mail needs.
Benefits
Straight select mail lists are the most affordable type of mail lists and work best for companies with a smaller budget. You are able to select which audience to target, what area you want to focus on, and how many records you want to purchase. This list also has the quickest turnaround time, so it works great if you have a short project timeline. You can usually receive your list within 1-2 days.
Limitations
While you can select certain demographics for the audience, these records are not scored or analyze to see which records are the best records to target. You will get a random selection from within the target audience. This means that not everyone who is selected will be a good prospect. They will meet your demographic and geographical requirements for the list, but they have not been hand selected for your business and offer.
Enhanced Mail List
What is it?
An enhanced mail list is best suited for companies who have a customer mail list but want to take it to the next level. A company’s mail list is run through a series of data hygiene steps to clean up the records. Next, missing information is appended to the list such as names, postal or email addresses, demographic, lifestyle, or behavioral data. All this information gives you a more complete look at who you are targeting.
Benefits
This type of customer mail list uses the data you currently have and makes sure you have the most up-to-date information on your customers. Appending missing contact information helps you reach your customers on traditional and digital marketing channels. With data enhancements, you can also add in additional information to your customer data file such as home owners, families with kids, or an interest in wine. You can take that information and design marketing pieces for each segment within your mail list.
Limitations
Enhanced mail lists allow you to narrow your focus on who you are targeting. They do require more analysis and data work, so they will cost more than a straight select list and will require more time to prepare. Turnaround time is typically 5-7 days. It’s important to note when you use an enhanced mail list, the records are randomly selected within the parameters set. The records are not scored or ranked from best to worst.
Modeled Mail List
What is it?
Modeled mail lists are analyzed in depth, scored and ranked, so you know which records are the most likely to respond and which records are the least likely to respond. These lists are ideal for businesses who want to target the best data records or want to do tiered marketing.
Benefits
Modeled mail list are customized for your business and involve creating an extensive customer profile, so you can see an in-depth view of who your best customers are. Once a profile has been created, the data list is scored against the profile. Each record is rated, so you can see which ones have the highest score and are the best to target. Likewise, you can see which records scored poorly, and you can remove from the campaign.
They also give you a clear view of how to execute a tiered marketing campaign. You can determine which records will get direct mail and digital, digital only, or no marketing simply by looking at their score. Once you have a data model of your customers, you can score prospect lists against it and find the best look-a-like customers for your business to target. Selecting records based on their rating lets you maximize your marketing efforts and reduce waste.
Limitations
In order to get a modeled mail list, you will need a customer data list. If you don’t have customer data, you can take steps to acquire it, but it will take some time. Modeled data list are customized and undergo extensive data work, so they take the longest time to receive. Turnaround time is anywhere from 1-2 weeks. While modeled lists are at a premium price, the records are of the highest quality and most likely to respond. This means you do not need to purchase as many records. These lists will yield the highest ROI for your campaign.
Next Steps
Regardless of whether you need a straight select, an enhanced, or a modeled mail list, we can help get you the right list for your holiday direct marketing campaigns. If you have questions about the different types of mail lists, send us an email or give us a call. We will be happy to help you figure out which list is best for your campaign and budget.