If there’s one question nagging on every business owner it’s, “How do I find more buyers?”  For most business owners, marketing professionals, and sales representatives, the answer is elusive, if not down right difficult.

For many, it’s easy to find more shoppers, but how do you find more buyers?  Add a free hot dog and some chips and you’ll get walk-in traffic on any weekend.  Offer a webinar with a value added proposition, you’ll get people signing up left and right.  But the buyers are really who you want to attract.  The buyers are those everyone can’t seem to find enough of.  The buyers are those who make the business stay in the black.  How do you find more buyers?  The answer is, in looking at your own database of existing buyers.  And not just those who purchased from you recently, but those who are the ideal, best customers.

Take a good look at your existing database of customers
Your existing internal customer database contains the information to truly make smart decisions.  How did you find those buyers to begin with?  What makes them better than others?  How long have they been buying from you?  And who are the most profitable?  The answer lies in first looking over those existing best customers.  You need only the names and addresses of your best customers.  Truly.  With that information, you can turn your internal database into your most valuable asset.  How is this done?  It’s done by profiling your customers.

Internal customer database profiling
Internal customer database profiling involves providing your existing mailing list of “good” customers (that means those you truly want to find more of) for the purposes of analyzing it for patterns.  The process is fairly simple.  Pass your internal database of mailing list records against a database of existing customers, append any and all applicable data variables to your customer mailing list records that match the host database.  In the case of a business to consumer profiling, you might find that your best customers have lower than average income and are on a fixed income because they are 65 or older.  Well, this tells you to focus on that market doesn’t it?  If you’re a business to business type company, you might find that the vast majority of your best customers are those who are in the retail sector of businesses and have a sales volume of less than $1,000,000.

What next?
Given the results of an internal customer profile, you now can search within the same given database for more “like” prospects, i.e., age 65 plus with fixed income, or retail businesses with less that 1 million in sales revenue.  Knowing this can help you with targeting your next mailing list audience, but also can help you version your next mailing list campaign.  What you say to your audience is equally as important as who you say it to.  And if you know who you are talking to, you are vastly more able to communicate the most effective message.

If you need help with profiling your internal customers database, call BB Direct at 866-501-6273.  We’re here to help you take your business marketing to the next level.

1. Usage reports

When renting a mailing list that’s a managed property, you can request a usage report before ordering. The usage report is a list of direct mail marketers who’ve tested the mailing list you’re considering. The usage report will also list those direct mail marketers who’ve not only tested the mailing list but have come back and ordered the mailing list again because the initial test direct mail campaign performed well.

By reviewing the usage report a new direct mail marketer can get a glance of other direct mail marketers who’ve either had success or failure. Those direct mail marketers who you recognize to be similar in product/service and offering, and who’ve had continuation on the mailing list, could be signaling that you too may have success. The usage report is a tool that it a first glance but by no means is an exact measurement of how your campaign will do.

2. Data hygiene and update schedules

It’s important to understand the data hygiene and update schedule of the mailing list you’re considering. Ask the source mailing list manager how deliverable the mailing list is expected to be. Ask the source mailing list manager how often the mailing list is updated. Frequency of NCOA and updates to the mailing list will help you understand what to expect before you direct mail to the names and addresses on this mailing list.

3. Choose a good mailing list broker for guidance

Choosing a good mailing list broker is the primary key to success. A good mailing list broker can tell you from experience which particular mailing list has the greatest chances for a successful direct mail campaign. Choose your mailing list broker who have industry knowledge and experience you’re in and one who can speak from experience how the mailing lists are compiled or captured.

4. Profile your internal customer mailing list

A simple internal customer mailing list profile will go along way to deciding on what criteria would be when building your mailing list. To find “look-alike” type people as those on your internal customer mailing list, have your direct mail list broker enhance your internal mailing list with several demographic and psychographic elements of information. These elements will tell a simple story about what all your existing customers have in common. Knowing this will help you decide what you should be chosen when building your acquisition direct mail list.

5. Profile the market you’re attempting to penetrate

Some preplanning can also be helpful when building your acquisition direct mail list. A new business in a new market should always size up the population, what the people there look like in terms of age, income, home value, and so forth before they begin building their mailing list. Running counts within an area can help a business determine who their new market “ideal customer” will be. The typical resident in Kenosha County Wisconsin looks vastly different than one in Orange County California.

6. What’s worked before, and especially what’s not worked before?

The key to mailing list success is measurement. If you invest in a direct mail campaign, you’ll want to measure the response results and compare those results from your previous campaigns. Doing so will allow you to make better decision making when it comes to building your next mailing list.

7. Saturation Mailing vs Compiled data

Sometimes it’s better to perform a direct mail campaign using a saturation resident occupant mailing list than to pay the extra amount to build a mailing list from your compiled element choices. The cost of the mailing list and the savings on postage should be considered when making this decision. If your product or service is right for almost everyone, this should be considered. An upscale restaurant may cater to only the upscale residence within a mile from it’s location but everyone has to eat and even the less fortune will splurge to dine out upscale.

1. Consider timing of your campaign
Your direct mail piece competes with the other mail pieces in the mailbox that day as well as the attention span of who you mailed the direct mail piece to.  In the summer months, the kids are out of school and families are busy with summer activities.  The weeks around December are filled with holiday activities that occupy a direct mail recipients attention that directly competes with the consideration of your mail piece.

2.  Consider the competition
How is your competition positioning themselves to the very audience you’re attempting to win business with?  What’s their offer, and is it similar to your offer?  Consider for a moment what the direct mail recipient considers when they receive your direct mail piece and your competitions direct mail piece.  Be sure your direct mail piece clearly defines your offer and that your offer is clearly different.  The offer doesn’t have to be better, but has to be different.

3.  Series mailings
Building brand is reinforced by mailing your direct mail audience multiple times throughout the year.  The message you’re sending to your audience should be consistent to be remembered.  By renting your mailing list for a multi-use, you’re able to direct mail the audience as many times as you’d like within a period of one year.

4.  Keep consistent with your message
There is a synergistic effect to consistently voicing the same message whether it is across multiple mediums of advertisement or multiple times through the use of direct mail.  Though direct mail marketing is one of the most measurable and controllable, your message should be consistent and clear to be heard and remembered by most.

5.  Setting expectations
If you’re a direct mail marketer representing a business who’s investing in direct mail, be sure to properly set the expectations of the direct mail campaign.  You should explain the possibility of undeliverable direct mail and what percentage.  You should also properly explain the potential response rates your customer should expect.  This should be done before the dollars invested are spent and in conjunction with the offering of a plan of action to take for various response rates.

6.  Business reply by mail
It cannot be said enough, response measurement is an important component to your direct mail campaign.  Including a response vehicle such as a Business Reply by Mail allows you to do just that.  Offering a catalog, order form, test product, free newsletter, etc…will help you decipher those you’ve direct mailed to that have a sincere interest in your product or service, from those who more likely don’t.

7.  Always be testing
No matter how successful your direct mail marketing campaigns are you should always be testing something.  Take a successful mailing list and attempt to learn something new from these direct mail responders.  Takes have of those initial responders and mail them twice as often as the others and see if the purchasing activity increases.  Append demographic elements to the entire mailing list of responders and see if there is any consistency or pattern with these responders.  You may find a cluster of responders from which you can test multiple versions on.

8.  Consider mailing to businesses for a consumer offer
Some offers typically direct mail marketed to a consumer mailing list could be direct mail marketed to a business mailing list.  After all, there are people who receive the mail at the business.  Those recipients aren’t used to receiving a personal offer so your direct mail piece may stand out from the rest.  This approach isn’t for every product/service but worthy of consideration for the simple fact that people creatures of habit.  Many affluent consumers are used to getting bombarded at home and many of the direct mail pieces get very little attention.  What they probably don’t see too often is a mail piece that’s completely unrelated to there employment arrive in the middle of their work day.  Still many people are in a different mode while at work, perhaps more relaxed, away from the children, fresh mind-set because it’s earlier in the day, and perhaps will are more able to offer your direct mail piece a bit more attention at their place of work.

Direct mail marketing for furniture store retail is essential to the success of maintaining foot traffic in furniture showrooms across any city. With heavy competition all vying for the attention of the too few buyers of residential furniture, the industry is liken to the auto dealership market. Like the auto dealership market, furniture stores sell most of their products on the weekend sales, offer financing, continually upgrade their merchandise, and attempt to position themselves differently amongst their competitors. The furniture store marketer integrates their brand message within the primary advertising mediums; direct mail, newspaper print, television, and online presence.

The direct mail marketing advantage

Direct mail marketing’s primary advantage is that it’s highly measurable. Every campaign dollar spent can be measured for performance by tracking response. The furniture store marketer can use direct mail to advertise a clearance sale or special financing offer but require the direct mail recipient to bring the direct mail piece with them when they come into the store to redeem the offer. Maybe it’s an RSVP for personal tour through the showroom, or a coupon for discount on certain furniture items. This direct mail piece is the recipients’ ticket to take advantage of the special offer. Too many beginning furniture store direct mail marketers lack an offer that is measurable and miss out on valuable response information. The primary goal to including a direct mail response measurement vehicle is to attempt to learn what’s working and what’s not working, how subtle changes in the mailing list, offer, creative, and timing affect the response. Direct mail can be measured to as high a degree as the direct mailer is willing to track it. And because this is so, great strides can be made as to the best mailing list audience, offer and creative direct mail piece.

Customer Mailing List Profiling

Though most anyone is a good candidate for furniture, there are more responsive people than others. Some direct mail campaigns attract some kind of people, while others attract other kinds of people. There’s no better way to determine the most responsive direct mail audience than to consider the previous customers of your furniture store. This can be done by providing your customer mailing list to a professional mailing list broker who’s experienced in database profiling. Your goal is to identify the differences within your internal customer mailing list as it compares to the rest of the population in the same market territory. Presumably, these other people are shoppers of your competition, because, well frankly, everyone needs to find a couch to sit on and if they’re not buying from you, they’re buying from someone else.

So how does the furniture direct mail marketer utilize his/her resources to capture information about their customer mailing list? It is easily done by having a number of elements of demographic and psychographic elements appended to the internal customer mailing list data. Then you look for patterns within the elements you’ve found, such as what’s the income range that most closely resembles your existing customers. This is done with other data elements until you come up with a description of these most “common” audience.

Market territory

The furniture direct mail marketer can also utilize their existing customer mailing list to determine their most natural market footprint. There are several things that affect the market territory beyond the need for the furniture. They are listed below:

* Driving distance
* Natural distractions such as driving on a bridge over a river or around a mountain
* Competition within the metro-area your store is located
* Traffic congestion between you and your prospects
* Easy of deliverability

All the above items shape the market territory of your furniture business. Developing a clear picture of where your customers will come from is aid in increasing your direct mail marketing campaign. The easiest way to accomplish this is to again, use your existing mailing list containing the mailing address of your customers. From here, you can append the carrier routes to each and every mailing list record you have on your database. These carrier routes and then be tabulated such that you can rank the most populated carrier routes to the least populated carrier routes. Those routes which are most populated should be your most ideal market territory and those routes with the least should be your least favorite to market to.

Furniture finance marketing

Keep in mind that a big part of the furniture direct mail marketers effort is to sell financing, not furniture. All furniture is attractive at the right price, so if you can direct mail a message that offers furniture, along with no payments, no interest for a period of such and such a date, the direct mail recipient is now challenged with deciding not to take furniture with no money down, instead of weighing out the option of wanting furniture enough to find the money to pay for it. The furniture buying experience changes for the direct mail recipient by installment payments, and for the direct mail furniture marketer by managing payment terms on more furniture sold.

Alt mailing list options

* New homeowner mailing list

New homeowners are a great target audience because new homeowners typically want to fill their new home with new furniture. Because they’ve just purchase a new home, they have exhausted their savings making the down payment but still need/want to complete their home. This target mailing list audience is perfect for the No Money Down/No Payments until the year XXXX. We can assume they’ve done everything they could to clean up their credit score so they should have no problem with the financing.

* Newly weds mailing list

Newly weds are a great mailing list audience to consider because no matter what furniture the new husband brings to the table, it’s hand carried to the curb usually within weeks of the marriage. The newly wed mailing list is not very large relative to the number of potential consumer mailing list records there are available but they are highly responsive to total make-over furniture plans.

* New Movers mailing list

The new movers mailing list is sometimes a good file to direct mail market to under certain conditions. Unlike the new homeowner mailing list, the new mover mailing list doesn’t account for the ability to finance the loan for new furniture. The new movers mailing list is great for those clearance sales that liquidate dated, but new furniture.

Within the real of furniture store direct mail marketing, there exists a program that most retail future store direct mail marketers adopt, and that is the clearance sale.  The almighty “everything must go close out sale”.  This direct marketing program works best for the sheer fact that people are always on the hunt for new furniture and those people in close proximity will more likely drop in to take a look around.  But not all people will drop in and not all people are likely in the market.  So how does clearance sale direct mail marketer maximize his/her direct marketing return on investment?  How do we choose to add to our mailing list, those people more likely to become direct mail responders than those who likely won’t respond?  The answer is in a three part strategy.

Direct Mail Strategy Part One

The first part of your direct mail marketing strategy is in mailing to your existing customers.  Those people, who are familiar with your brand, are more likely to recall your showroom, want something they didn’t purchase the first time, and come back quickly before the showroom is “picked over”.  This mailing list should include both previous shoppers as well as lookiloo’s.  Anyone who’s familiar and semi-interested in your type of furniture.  If you’re making room for the new line of items, everything must go.  This message must be expressed in every direct mail piece you mail out, in every print space ad you post, and in every radio spot you air.

Direct Mail Strategy Part Two

Those people who’ve already shopped and bought at your store all have common interests and buyer ability.  They all considered your furniture selection over other stores in the local area.  Why?  What differentiates you from the furniture stores in the area?  And what are they doing to promote their store location?  Are they using direct mail marketing?  Do they mail to their internal customer database?  What are they saying and how do they position themselves to the other competitors?

Using your existing internal mailing list of existing customers, you can clone “look-a-likes” of these very same people.  You can actually mimic these very same people to find new potential direct mail prospects that have the same characteristics, lifestyle interests, and furniture buying ability.  You can also identify how far those best direct mail marketing customers might consider driving to find you.  Talk to your mailing list broker for more information on the ability to profile your customers, to find new customers.

Direct Mail Strategy Par Three

In your review of existing customers, you can use your existing internal customer mailing list to determine how far those customers drove to shop at your store.  What you will find is that a large portion of your customers all found you within the same or similar geographic territory.  Here you can make the assumption that more people will likely drive the same or similar distance if invited via direct mail.  So consider mailing to everyone within the same geographic area’s of your existing customers.  Those people who live near the furniture store location and recognize the building, the parking lot, and the big sign outside.  These potential direct mail prospects are good prospects because they are local in nature, and are great for walk-in traffic customers on the way to the grocery store.

Going forward

Each year, your potential prospect mailing list will continue to grow.  It’s important to keep good records of those people who not only purchase your from your store, what they buy, and how much they spend, but it’s also important to keep tabs on those who stop in the store, what they look at but don’t purchase, how often do they come in?  The more you add to your internal mailing list of customers and prospects, the better you can communicate with these prospects.  Each of these prospects that stop in to check out your selection from time to time should all receive an invite to the clearance sale.  As this mailing list builds over time, semi-sales and special RSVP invites are perfect for this segment of your mailing list.

Careful consideration should be taken when determining who your direct mail audience is.  You may have the ideal direct mail offer that pulls at the heart strings of a good prospect, but if mailed to the wrong audience, the mail piece may end is zero sales leads.  Likewise, mailing to the perfect audience and with a lack-luster offer could also end in little to no sales lead response.

One way to define your direct mail audience is to through mailing list data modeling.  Data modeling is a process of using a mailing list of existing good customers to better understand who to mail to in order to find new customers.  Done correctly, data modeling can segment your existing customers as defined by what they’ve purchased, how frequent they purchase, and how much they spend.  The more transactional and response measurement you’ve recorded on your existing customer database, the better you’ll be able to not only build a better mailing list for future mailings but you’ll also be able to mail these new prospects the more likely offer they’ll respond to.

This data modeling process is done by using your existing mailing list of “good customers”, those names and addresses of existing customers, and defining which mailing list records purchase Product A vs. Product B, which mailing list records purchase 12 times a year vs. which purchase twice a years, and which have purchased year after year vs. which purchased just once then disappeared.  The names and address of this mailing list are then matched to a master database of all the names and addresses in the entire U.S.  Any demographic or psychographic information contained on those matched records on the master file are recorded and evaluated.  The data modeling demographer attempts to draw conclusions by looking for patterns within the various transactional segments provided.

Also considered is the patterned of differences found but evaluating those residence within the various geographic markets found on the internal customer mailing list.  How do the direct mail marketer customers look differently to those residences within the same market?  The more defined these similarities and differences become, the better the direct mail marketer can size up who they will want to mail to in the future.  They may discover that the existing customers all have a specific income and child age within the household.  Knowing that, one can now identify other “look-alike” households in the same area and spend more direct mail dollars mailing just them.