1. The desire for instant gratification

Launching an bulk email campaign is like trying get your car rolling from a dead stop. You think you’re going to manage it all in one push? Nope. It takes time to work up some momentum. And before you achieve a decent speed, you’re gonna start wondering if you are even up to the task. Be patient!

Studies have proved the only variable that influences the success of any campaign is the power of your message. So make sure you are saying the right thing. “Uncover the story that is uniquely yours; focus your campaign; commit to your message.”i And be prepared to give it time.

Once you get your momentum, it will be hard to stop it! Sure, along the way you’re gonna have to give the occasional push, but with the momentum established, the job becomes much easier.

2. Attempting to reach more people than the budget will allow

This is the reach versus frequency issue. Let’s say you are going to buy inventory or place an ad in an email newsletter. You can afford to make 100,000 impressions. Do you go for 10 placements in one newsletter that goes out to 10,000 people, or do you opt for one placement that goes out to 100,000 people? Same number of impressions, but the first option exposes fewer viewers to multiple impressions.

Think about it this way: Would you rather reach 100% of the people and convince them 10% of the way of them, or reach 10% of the people and convince all of them all the way? When it comes to maximizing your email marketing efforts, this is a useful analogy: Your message is the nail, repetition is the hammer, and a block of wood is the customer. If the nail is sharp and you hammer effectively, you will pierce through the wood and clinch the customer.

3. Assuming the business owner knows best When it comes to stuff in which you have a huge personal investment (your kids, your homes, your businesses), you risk losing your objectivity. Hey, it’s a human thing. Too much knowledge about your company and what you offer leads you to answer questions nobody is asking. When you’re inside the bottle, it’s hard to read the label. But that’s also when you risk pushing your own interests at the expense of your customers’ interests. Sometimes it helps to bring in an objective outsider to give you some perspective.

4. Unsubstantiated claims Folks make claims all the time that miss targeting their customers’ needs and simply wind up turning them off. Specifics about yourself, your way of doing business and your products are far more persuasive and cut to the chase far more effectively than generalities. So get credibly specific!!

When marketing to businesses some of the more difficult tasks are finding the right companies to contact and identifying the final decision maker. Whether you are doing a Direct Mail or Telemarketing campaign, you will only be as good as the list you are using. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that you chose the right Business Leads for your marketing efforts.

There are many varieties and sources for Business Leads. Finding the right Business Leads starts with using the best sources of data to produce the most accurate information which will yield the highest ROI. With over a decade of experience working with all of the sources of Business Leads we have identified and use the most trusted, accurate, selectable and comprehensive Business data available in the list industry today.

Currently there are over 13 million records available in our US Business Database. Also, there are over 50 fields of selects which allows you to fully customize and target the businesses you want to reach so you can successfully complete the task of finding the right Business Leads.

Some of the more popular selects in our US Business Database include: Employee Size, Sales Volume, Years in Business, Legal Status, SIC Codes, Contact Name, Titles, Ethnicity and Company URL.

Having the right selects is only half the battle in creating the right Business Leads for your marketing campaigns. The second part is how current the information is and how often is it updated. We are dedicated to providing the freshest data available by receiving weekly updates and verifying every record in our US Business Database every three months.

Our experienced List Advisors make certain that your Business Leads are targeted in a manner that maximizes the reach, penetration and response of your marketing campaigns. We are here to answer all of your questions and look forward to working with you in finding the right Business Leads for your marketing campaigns. Our philosophy is that we are only successful if you are

The following are the different types of mailing lists that you can use for your direct marketing campaigns:

House List
The House List is an internal list compiled from information you already have. The list includes people you already know or have had contact with. Typically, this is a list of customers, a list of people who have inquired about your services, or have sent a response to you.

With your best prospect being current customers, your house list represents your best prospect list for selling more products or services to. It will outperform a high-quality purchased or rented mailing list because the people on list already know you, trust you, and have confidence in their business with you.

A house list is built over time and will prove immensely valuable.

Compiled List
The Compiled List is a list of composed, collected, and edited information. The data had been collected or accumulated from several sources and entered into a database program. Sources for this information could be public records (ex: water and public utility bills, voter and vehicle registration lists), public and professional directories (ex: chamber of commerce, trade associations), and even the White and Yellow pages.

The benefit of compiled lists is that they are sourced from high volume directories, which contain important demographic information with database segmentation in them. The challenge, however, is that they lack the quality of being proven direct responders.

Response List
The Response List is a list of people who have responded to an offer. It could be a TV or print ad, infomercial customers, direct mail response, catalog purchaser, magazine subscriber, or free report responders.

Publication List
The Publication List is a list consisting of a publication’s paying subscribers. These lists are good because, like the magazines, they are usually very targeted to their audience. Any publisher, no matter how large or small, is a good source for list rental.

Hotline List
Hotline is a term in the direct marketing business that is used to describe “the hottest, freshest, most recent” members of a list. This list contains information of people who have responded, purchased within the past 90 days. Although some list owners promote their lists as “hotter”, with a monthly or weekly update, the industry standard for a list being “hot” is 90 days.

Membership List
A Membership list is basically a membership roster of organizations, clubs, and associations. These lists are not always available and sometimes difficult to acquire, but you can contact various organizations directly to try to arrange a list rental or purchase.

E-mail List
E-mail lists can be obtained from many of the aforementioned list sources, provided e-mail information was also collected when gathering their data. You can also acquire e-mail addresses yourself by creating content on your website, such as a survey, contest, or free offer, where you can ask for an e-mail address.

Business and Consumer Lists
Business lists reach individuals at a particular business. Consumer lists target people at home. Although the information on these lists can sometimes crossover due to things like people who work from home, the general rule of thumb is to target the place where the service or product will be used.