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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Part 1 - How to Build Your Mailing List for Little to No Cost

As a mailing list expert, I am often asked how an opt-in list can be built if funds are limited.  There are several ways this can be accomplished--even at no cost whatsoever.

Direct mail lists can be obtained from the public record

If you are looking for postal address lists you can use for direct mailings, look to the public
record.  At the city, county and state level you will find a lot of name-address records that can be obtained at little to no cost by anyone requesting these.  These are from filings such as for boat and gun registrations, occupational and professional licenses, deed filings, new business license filings, voter registrations, sales tax applicants, marriage licenses and more.

Agencies you can search online include Secretary of State, State Corporations Commission, State Franchise Tax Board, County Recorder or Registrar of Deeds, State or County Registrar of Voters, Board of Contractors, Dept. Motor Vehicles (boat registrations) and other agencies.  With a little online research for your state, county and/or city, you can quickly compile a large mailing list from public records with these and other agencies.  You should note that the laws regarding what constitutes a public record will differ from state to state.  You can check what the law is for any given state here:  State Sunshine Laws.

If the data you are sourcing is downloadable, there typically will no cost for it unless you are subscribing for a daily, weekly or monthly feed.  Some of the data may only be available on a CD that the agency will mail to you.  There will usually be just a nominal cost to cover postage and the CD itself although fees may apply for certain lists.  Where costs typically are involved are for paper copies of a list, however, you would want a digital copy of the list (download or CD) so copy fees would not apply to you.

How can public record lists be used to make money for you.

You may wonder how lists like these could be used.  Let's suppose you have a product or service that might be targeted to new businesses such as web design or SEO.  Wouldn't it be valuable if you could get a jump on the competition by having a list of brand new business filings you could promote your services to as soon as they launch?

Sources of these new business filings include fictitious business name filings, corporation and limited liability company filings, business license filings and sales tax registrations.  Any one of these could serve as a steady source of leads for the service.  Although rarely will email addresses be included, there will often be telephone numbers in addition to postal addresses.

I had a friend a few years ago who was self-employed selling merchant services to businesses.  Each week, she would source the new business filings in the county and would mail them a flier she printed out on her home computer.  The flier had a photo of the credit card swipe machine she was selling along with her offer on processing rates on one side with her cell phone number and email address in large type at the bottom.  She then merely folded the 8.5 X 11" sheet into thirds and placed a peel-and-stick ("pressure sensitive") address label that she ran off on her computer.  The last step was to affix postage and to either staple the mailer so it remained folded or to use a nickle or quarter sized round pressure sensitive sticker to seal it by folding it over the open edges of the folded paper.

Using this simple method, she was able to sustain an income of over $6,500 a month (and this was years ago!).

Let's take another example.  Suppose you have a boat detailing business.  wouldn't a list of new boat registrations be valuable?  You might send the boat owners a colorful postcard you print yourself, at a quick copy center or a digital printer or you might phone them as a way of introducing your services.

Suppose you own a pool service?  You may be able to obtain a list of pool owners from the County Recorder or another agency.  Or, suppose you own a lawn service.  A list of new deed filings could be a great source of leads for you (and, in fact, industry research finds that 72% of new homeowners will spend up to $30,000 in products and services in the first 12 months following their move.  In fact, they outspend their neighbors by 20 times!

But what about email addresses?  How do you get these?

Once you have a name and postal address for someone, you can do look-ups using people directories such as Spokeo.  This said, I would advise against mass emailing anyone who has not actually opted in to your (email) mailing list.  The fines and penalties for violating the CAN SPAM law and its various state counterparts can be severe.

If you would like to contact your list by email and have some funds to invest, consider having email addresses appended to your postal address list using a commercial service such as the one offered by my business,  American Information Marketing, LLC ("AIM").  The business is an original data compiler of over 44 million consumer records along with specialty lists and also functions as a mailing list broker.  In the latter capacity, AIM is able to research and acquire virtually any type of B2C or B2B mailing list that is commercially available at no additional cost to you.  This is because mailing list brokers receive a commission from the list owner. There are thousands of mailing list brokers to choose from although, for email append, I recommend you work directly with the mailing list compiler who will be actually doing the append.

This process involves passing the postal address past a large consumer database that has email addresses associated with the names and postal addresses.  Where there is a match between the name and postal address records on both lists, the email address from the consumer database is added to the matching record on the list that was submitted for email append.  The industry match rate is around 10-20%.  This means that you could expect that 15% of your list would have email addresses matched to it and appended (added).  The cost is typically charged by the match which means you will not be charged for any records on your list that was not successfully appended with an email address.  The price is typically volume driven so you'll need to request an estimate from what ever service you decide to use.  This will initially be based on the size of your "input file" (the mailing list you are submitting for email append) times the anticipated match rate.  Typically there will be a true-up once the actual match rate is known.

A quick word of caution

A word of caution regarding email addresses that are rented or purchased commercially:  I would advise you to make certain it is a true opt-in list where the addressee has agreed to receive partner or third-party offers.  While some in the industry will tell you that there is no such thing as a purchased opt-in list based on the notion that the addressee did not specifically opt-in to YOUR list.  However, as noted above, what counts is the language they agreed to when they opted in to the source list.  The Direct Marketing Association ("DMA") considers the practice of marketing to third-party opt-in lists to be acceptable provided appropriate opt-in methods are used (the DMA frowns on harvesting email addresses from websites and online directories which, in fact, is unlawful).

 Part 2 will cover how to build your own opt-in email list

If you would like to know how you can build your own opt-in email list at little to no cost, go on to Part 2 (see next post).  This is exactly the same content covered in the free report I am offering with my e-book "List Broker Riches." The e-book itself goes into far greater detail than I can go into on this Blog or a free report.  It not only teaches how you can compile your own mailing lists but it goes into great detail about how you can earn as much as a six figure annual income renting, licensing and selling the mailing lists you compile.  It's perfect business that can be run from a home office and website!


Go On to Part 2 of this article.

Cheers,
Tommi

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