This post is one of those that promotes our newest product.  It’s an advertisement, not a blog post.  I don’t normally blog in the fashion but figured the 172 “comments” made in the past 4 weeks that were caught in the blog’s spam filter gives me the right to throw one in myself.  So……here it is.

We now are able to offer an Affiliate Count & Order system for clients promoting mailing lists where their clients want the ability to run their own counts and place their own orders.  The Affiliate site program allows partners to add our count & order system to their web presence.

So what is an affiliate site?
Basically, the count & order system we’re talking about here is, in essence, an online mailing list vending machine.  Your clients visit your site, link to the mailing list site enabling them to produce their own customized mailing list on the fly.  The “anytime available” access allows your clients to focus on creating their mailing list on their schedule.  It also gives your clients the power to learn how mailing lists are created, and to realized their limitations.

Is it right for you?
This is a great questions…when does it make sense to add such a link to your site?  Well, let me tell you that for starters, adding a site such as this doesn’t immediately increase web traffic to your site.  The affiliate site would contain your logo, and give your site visitors the ability to order mailing list products.  But, you should understand that  just because you have this system, doesn’t mean people will flock to your site and start buying.  Sites that benefit most include one or more of the following:

• You you currently offer mailing lists to your customers.

• Most of your website visitors purchase mailing lists or related services such at direct mail or lettershop services.

• You are planning on expanding your services to include and plan to make mailing lists an important component of these new services.

• You are a mailing list broker.

• You currently purchase a high degree of mailing lists for your own mailing needs.

If your business does not include any of the following, but you still feel your business would benefit from incorporating an online mailing list component to your website, please call us to discuss other possible system functionalities that may be of interest.  You can find an example of our affiliate site by clicking here.

As I’ve been asking around about the future holds for direct mail service providers and have been getting the general consensus that business is good.  This week a slump in retail sales and the USPS considering shorting their delivery days to 5 per week, it’s no wonder many are concerned.  But in conversations I’ve had this week, I mostly hear about the ice, snow, and blistering cold.  I do hear that acquisition mail (those campaigns to cold prospects) are down, but listening to the voice of mail service providers throughout the country, business is maintaining and businesses are continuing their direct mail campaigns.

I’ve been also polling the data providers.  With this group I’ve been hearing a mixed bag of response.  For some, those who in the past have focused on one industry vertical, business is flat.  They are reaching for numbers and working on developing new vertical markets to penetrate.  For those mail service providers who’ve not put their eggs all in one basket, business is stead and growing.

The direct mail marketing industry is considered a “recession-proof” industry.  When the economy is good, businesses use direct mail, when the economy is faulting, smart businesses spend more on advertising.  But there is a threshold where the economy can be so bad that all businesses suffer, including those involved providing direct mail marketing services.

Currently, I would argue that we are not nearly close to an economic downturn that forces businesses to stop advertising.  But I would say that the conditions are different in that our financial lending system is broken and because of it, businesses which borrow money to make payroll must draw money from other area’s such as advertising.

As of today, President Obama’s newest stimulus package is being weighed.  The BBC reports conflicting views on nationalizing our banking system.  Large bank CEO’s are seen as taking bonus’s while the rest of us suffer.  Issues in the Middle East continue to grow more and more complex.  And Steeler Nation has temporarily distracted us from all of it.

I believe we have tremendous opportunity in this county to “rebrand” America, truly develop renuable energy that will create new jobs, and prospect is high in bringing our service men and women back home.  For this and so many other reasons, I remain optimistic.

Considering mailing to licensed professionals in the medical field?  Before you do, there are couple things you should know.

Where do the names and addresses come from?
Many mailing list providers draw their licensed professionals mailing list data from one or more sources.  But there’s truly only a few places this type of data can be drawn from.  Since many professionals must renew their license with the state in which they practice, the state is a obvious first place to look.  Each state releases information about who is licensed in a particular field.  Data of this type can also be drawn from organizations that capture memberships in a particular field such as the AMA (American Medical Association).  The AMA does directly sell their list of members (and non-members) to direct mail marketers.  There are only a few licensed agents of the AMA file and the cost for such a file is considerably more expensive than state licensed data.  It should be also noted that the AMA will not release a mailing list of ONLY AMA members.  They instead, blend their members with non-members.

There are many other “managed” mailing list properties, i.e., magazine subscribers, smaller industry specific organizations, etc.  But most of these other “managed” sources are considerable smaller in size and therefore not ideal for small geo markets.

What exactly does updating mean?
Updating is a term used loosely in the mailing list industry.  Since the mailing list brokers themselves are not required to hold a license, there’s little regulation or standard for how to define “updating”.  When you are told the list is updated monthly or quarterly, one might assume that the list has been completely recreated.  This may be true for many kinds of data but highly unlikely with the Licensed Professional File.  More often than not, the Licensed Professionals Database is “updated” monthly meaning that the names and addresses have been processed through the NCOA (National Change Of Address).  This process only corrects the location of an individual or business if they’ve submitted a change of address with the USPS (United States Post Office).  More often than not, professionals are added to or removed from the database only once a year.  Some “providers” make claim that the database they compile is newer than it really is.  In fact, some files may not be “re-built” for several years.

Once a licensed professional always a licensed professional
The main reason “providers” will go so long is because, over time, very few changes actually take place on this type of database.  The cost of re-building a database such as this exceeds the benefit, thus, a little data hygiene is all that is applied.

If you’re in the market for a mailing list and aren’t sure when it makes sense to pay extra for a better list, give BB Direct a call at (866) 501-6273, or visit us on the web.  We’ll be happy to help you with your direct mail data strategy.

For one, not all licensed mailing lists are the same.  When shopping for a licensed professionals mailing list, ask about how often the list is updated.  And not just, when, but how do they define updating.

Dun & Bradstreet, better known as D&B, is the premier business database compiler of choice for BB Direct.  Though there are several business to business database compilers, D&B uses strict guidelines for which business enterprise is ultimately added to the database.  This is important to remember when you are considering a direct mail marketing campaign to businesses.  So many businesses today come and go before they become profitable.  So many others are really just, “Doing Business As”, businesses of another company.  And still, so many businesses relocate and become difficult to track the age and size of the business enterprise.

One of the unique characteristics of the Dun and Bradstreet business database is that every business record has been assigned a Dun’s number.  This is kind of like a persons social security number for a business.  If your business has not yet been assigned a Dun’s number, your business has not yet been added to the database.  The Dun’s number allows for better accountability with relocation of businesses.

Linkage
The D&B database does a great job with linking businesses with other businesses.  If your business is owned by another, this would constitute a link.  The top business is considered the Ultimate company within the organization.

Like most business to business databases, you’ll find similiar selectability to include the size of business in terms of both estimated sales revenue and number of employee’s, contact names with titles, numbre of years in business, ethnic origin of the owner, both the primary and secondary Standard Index Code to identify the type of business catagory, etc.  BB Direct is proud to offer Dun & Bradstreet as our first choice database for compiled business to business data.  The reliability and consistency for accuracy is second to none.  We recommend D&B for most of the requests we receive from our clients.

If you would like to learn more about the D&B Database, it’s compilation methodology, and direct mail application stategies using business to business mailing lists, visit us at BB Direct or call us toll-free at (866) 501-6273.  You can also order this mailing list data directly from our online count & order system by visiting BB Direct Leads.com.

Yes, it’s here.  Sought after for some time, the apartment complex database has been asked for time and time again and now we have it.  If you’re a mailer looking to target those individuals who rent and live within a particular apartment complex, provide us with the complex name and zip code it resides, and BB Direct will produce the addresses for these dwellers.

We can also sort by rent amount such that if you were to provide a list of zip codes and ask for apartment complexes with an average rental income of, say $800/month or greater, we’ll do it.  Here you would get all addresses within the complex, whether the rental income is below or above.  This select will allow you the ability to hone in on only those complex dwellers which best suit your offer.

The apartment complex mailing list doesn’t normally come with the current name of the resident.  It will typically read, “Resident”.  But for a small additional fee, we can append names where available to personalize your mailing list.  Currently, the national average of name coverage is about 77% of the file.

This mailing list is ideal for home builders and Realtors looking for specific renters who may be in the market for a new home.  Other popular offers are mortgage lenders, restaurants, pizza & dry cleaning delivery, gym memberships, and an assortment of retail shopping offers.

If you would like to learn more about this or other mailing list targeting we offer, visit us at BB Direct or call one of our mailing list representatives at (866) 501-6273.

With B2B Newsletter Marketing, the goal is to continue to increase your readership.  And with B2B Newsletters, the competition for a finite number of potential readers is limited.  Therefore, it’s increasingly more important to delivering the right offer to your audience cannot be stressed enough.  There are so many business industry specific newsletters that deliver so many messages, if you don’t offer a right message that’s relevant to your audience, you will lose them.

Consider the many newsletter invitations you receive on a weekly basis.  And of those, consider how many you read regularly.  If you don’t have a relevant subject and the articles are simply not helpful or not written well, what value does your newsletter bring?  For those individuals who DO read newsletters regularly, they do so because they want to learn something more.  They want to improve what you currently know.  They want to better understand their customer and their competition.  If you’re not offering this in your newsletter, you should reconsider the content of your newsletter.  There should always be some sort of subscriber feedback with a business to business newsletter.  Ask your readers what they want to see more of and what questions they have for the writer.  Create a dialog with your readers so that you can you can make strategic improvements to the content of your newsletter.

Business professionals live a busy life with many distractions.  The successful ones are careful with where they spend their time.  They are conscience of how long they spend reading unimportant documents, and they rarely read from uninteresting sources more than once.  Some industry specific newsletters have more competition than others.  The better you understand your competition, the better you’re able to distinguish yourself from the other newsletters within your industry.  Become acquainted with these other newsletter writers if for nothing else to potentially swap your subscriber mailing lists.

There are two very important strategies to improving your Business to Business newsletter readership.  The first of course is to make sure you are writing relevant subject matter.  This cannot be stressed enough.  The second is to invite others to read your newsletter.  Those you invite to read must come from the ideal mailing list source.  Ideally, conference attendees and readers of other newsletters is a good mailing list to consider.  You may want to incorporate banner ad placement at locations throughout the web that capture the attention of “your” ideal reader prospect.

If you’re Business to Business Newsletter is mailed through the postal mail, odds are, the best mailing list for your newsletter would be from another newsletter than was mailed through the post as well.  Many times a competitive mailing list is difficult to attain.  You may want to consider some sort of advertisement space placement within a competitor’s newsletter.  In this case, look at ways to decrease the threat you pose on competition.  You may consider a swap of your newsletter subscriber names for your competitions newsletter subscriber names.
The more you become away of the marketing efforts of these other business to business newsletter competitors, the better you’ll be able to position yourself in the mix of choices your industry prospects have.

A growing interest is placed on a unique specializes database called the College Bound Students database.  This file consists of names and addresses of High School students who are planning to attend a college or university after they graduate from High School.  The list is selectable by the year of school they are currently in High School and the curriculum they plan to study.

The data for this type of mailing list is captured at the high schools themselves.  This is done by collecting the names and addresses of those students who complete financial aid applications.  The benefit for the student is that once they complete the financial aid application, they receive free information on financial assistance programs to help them.  With so many types of programs available to the High School student who is considering higher education, the benefits package they receive is very helpful.  The student must complete their application in order to receive this informative package, so the system is a win-win for everyone.

Today’s high school teenagers, most of them in the higher-education bound group are influencing the U.S. economy in excess of $240 billion annually.  Savvy marketers use this list product to promote such items as student loan, high tech items, scholarships, automobiles and accessories, credit cards education, telecommunications products, and further education.

Not all students in high school will say they will be going to college, nor will all those saying they want to go will actually go.  That’s why it’s important to make allowances for this type of data.  It’s important to remember their will always be some degree of inaccuracy with this, and all, databases.