Find profits in your company’s customer marketing and mailing lists

Every year millions of dollars are wasted by using outdated marketing information. If you are not cleaning up your own company marketing and customer lists at least every six months you may also be wasting thousands of dollars.

As an example, let’s say you have a customer list of 10,000 records and you make four mailing per year at a cost of $2.00 per mail piece.  If your customer list has deteriorated by only 15% over a year this equals 1500 mail pieces each mailing that do not reach the intended customer or prospect.  This would amount to a waste of $3,000 per mailing or $12,000 for the year.  Unless you are using first class mail you will not receive undelivered mail pieces back allowing you to correct your records, they are just disposed of by the post office.  You reduce the ROI and success statistics of your marketing programs.  You can easily see how an out-of-date marketing list affects your bottom line by applying these numbers to your own list size and marketing costs.  Census figures show that over 25% of consumers have changes in their contact and demographic information annually.

For less than 10% of your lost profits you can cleanse and update your in-house marketing list. Your list can be updated by scrubbing against the National Change of Address and Social Security records. This process will also remove deceased individuals, duplicate records and households new to do-not-call, or do-not-mail lists.

You can also use this opportunity to add missing record statistics to your marketing lists, such as household incomes, ages, presence of children and 100’s of critical statistical purchasing indicators relevant to your company’s specific products and services.   

If you want to contact more qualified prospects you may also have your current customer list profiled and receive additional lists of prospects that match your best customers in what ever geography you want.  Structure new sales territories and/or locations based on the distribution of qualified potential customers. You can receive reports giving you demographic information about your current customers that will help you plan more effective marketing campaigns. 

While database management and maintenance is certainly not an exact science the continual changes in consumer information is a proven fact.  Make sure that your company stays on top of these changes by regularly cleaning and updating your customer and prospect lists.  You will save hundreds of dollars on our marketing campaigns and project the most professional image to our clients and prospects by using up-to-date contact information.  GOOD SELLING!

Jim Wallert is the owner of J-Wall Marketing, a database hygiene and marketing list company.  They have over 30 years of successful experience working with all sizes and types of businesses and organizations with list and direct marketing services. 

Check out J-Wall Marketing at www.jwallmarketing.com