The Ultimate Guide to Targeted Mailing Lists

Consumer reading direct mail. Ultimate Guide to Targeting Mailing Lists, a blog by BR Printers.

Targeted mailing lists can increase your campaign’s return on investment. Direct mail successfully breaks through digital marketing noise as 90% of direct mail gets opened, compared to only 20-30% of emails. If you’re considering adding direct mail to your marketing strategy, don’t skip the most important step. Use targeting mailing lists. Without identifying and reaching the best recipients, your message can get ignored by customers.

At BR Printers, one of our capabilities includes printing labels for food, beverage, and medical companies. Imagine, our team creates a piece of direct mail to support our labels campaign. This piece of mail has label examples inside, showing clients how our high-quality labels can help their business. Direct mail printing is complete and it’s time to mail our advertisement.

Who should we send this piece of mail to?

  1. Homeowners
  2. Businesses Owners
  3. Pet Owners

This is a make-or-break decision for our campaign. We don’t print home organization labels or stickers of your furry friends, we print labels for food, beverage, and medical companies. We want to reach Business Owners; therefore we need a business mailing list.

Use direct mail advertising segmentation strategies to identify your target audience. Once you understand your customers, choose the appropriate targeted mailing list or lists for your business.

Types of Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are created when valuable contact information is organized into groups determined by market segmentation. Segmentation is, “the process of dividing a company’s target market into groups of potential customers with similar needs and behaviors,” according to the BDC.

Marketers use the following types of mailing lists and more to reach their customers.

House Mailing List

The mailing information a company has collected from customers over time makes up the house mailing list. If reaching out to your current client base is a part of your campaign strategy, you’ll use house mailing lists. Reach potential new clients by using another type of list.

Compiled Mailing Lists

A list of contact information compiled from public and private records. Compiled lists target broad demographics.

consumer mailing lists are a targeted mailing list marketers use to reach consumers with physical mailConsumer Mailing Lists

A list of personal contact information that helps marketers target consumers instead of businesses is called a consumer mailing list. In a consumer mailing list data can be filtered down based on demographic specifications.

Business/B2B Mailing Lists

Business, also known as B2B, mailing lists are used by companies who want to advertise to other businesses.

Occupant Mailing Lists

An occupant list gives marketers the ability to reach owners and residents in a specific area without giving them names and other demographic information about the recipient.

Response Mailing List

If someone has responded to a previous company’s offer, they’re added to a response mailing list. These individuals have shown engagement with direct mail marketing items in the past so they’re a great target market for businesses.

new mover mailing lists are a targeted mailing list marketers use to reach new movers with physical mailNew Mover Lists

New residents are potential new clients for local businesses. This list might not be beneficial for all businesses, but it can turn strangers into lifelong clients.

New Parent Mailing Lists

Like new movers, new parents are looking for products and services that they’ve never purchased. If this is your target market, these lists are essential for your direct mail strategy.

Birthday Mailing List

A coupon or discount sent to consumers on their birthday is a fun and effective way to promote your products and services while strengthening customer relationships.

Renter Mailing Lists

A direct mailing list can get very granular. This is particularly helpful if you’ve defined a specific target market and don’t want to send advertising out to the masses. A renter mailing list is a great example of a niche mailing list that could benefit specific industries and companies.

Homeowner Mailing Lists

If your ideal customer is an adult looking for refinancing offers, you don’t want your money to be spent mailing a brochure to a recent college grad. This is where homeowner mailing lists come into play. A homeowner mailing list can be broken down into mortgage type, payment history, and more.

High-Income Household Mailing Lists

Marketing an expensive product or service can be done effectively with a high-income household direct mailing list. Only sending mail, magazines, brochures, and other advertising items to people with the means to purchase these items alludes to exclusivity.

How do you get a mailing list?

There are two ways to get a targeted mailing list. One approach is to build your own list. You can compile addresses from internal information collected and lists used in the past. If you’re looking to reconnect with your customer base this is a cost-efficient method, although it restricts your direct mail campaign from reaching new audiences. You can avoid missing potential new customers by purchasing a specific list from a direct mail list service.

Print Impactful Direct Mail with BR Printers

Reach the right audience and make a statement with your direct mail marketing through targeted mailing lists. This guide is a helpful tool for marketers in all industries to learn about mailing lists and the types of targeted lists out there. Don’t be scared to reuse mailing lists for future campaigns and watch your performance increase!

BR’s Denver programming team provides marketing segmentation services on direct marketer customer files where sortable data, lead, and list management is present. All while design, direct mail printing, shipping, and bulk mailing are completed in-house and under one roof. Contact us today.