Marketing lists: Setting your expectations for success

Having the right expectations of what you can achieve out of your marketing list is important. If you think that pinging out a thousand emails as cheaply as possible through MailChimp is going to be the silver bullet that makes you wealthy overnight, you’re unfortunately wrong.

But success is very much possible – if you take a strategic, patient approach and if you keep an open mind.

Using your marketing list wisely

A carefully selected marketing list is best utilised with a three-pronged approach – through email marketing, direct mail and telephone. You should license the list for a 12-month period and use it several times throughout the year as part of a planned strategy.

Persistence and consistency is key. Your prospects may actually come in and out of your market several times throughout the year, so you need to keep your brand under their noses for as long as possible but without overdoing it.

Choosing the frequency of your marketing campaigns

Your company’s offering will partly dictate how often you run campaigns, but we find that running four to six per year to the same target audience gets great results across the vast majority of sectors. Here’s the basic structure you should follow for each campaign:

• First week – email
• Second week – post
• Third week – telephone follow-up

Then repeat this process – once every two months

Utilising all three channels

It’s important to cover all three channels in every campaign you run, because not everyone will respond to one particular channel (although some people will). Getting your company’s brand out there regularly among your prospective audiences will build confidence in your brand and therefore increase the likelihood of prospects converting, so backing this up with a good social and web marketing plan will help.

Plan your campaign in a way that ensures you can keep up with the follow-up phone calls. If we are managing your email campaigns, we can supply you the details of anyone who has opened or clicked on the link to your website, marking these contacts as the priorities for follow-up calls.

Try new things, and be patient

Achieving success with your marketing list is going to take time, but you’ll also benefit from a bit of experimentation. Once you’ve run a few campaigns, you’ll be able to see what’s working and what isn’t, so trying some new approaches (as long as they’re suitable for your audience!) might yield strong results.

Further reading: Data HQ’s complete guide to marketing lists