It’s always best to walk first, then run — especially when a financial investment is at stake. This is particularly true when it comes to acquiring new marketing lists. Before you purchase or rent the entire list and market to every prospect, acquire a representative sampling of the list, and put it to the test.
The larger the sampling, the greater your level of confidence about the response you’ll achieve across the board.
Mail or email your solicitation and evaluate response. If response is less than you typically receive from your current, active list, you have learned a valuable lesson. While it may make sense to test again, you now have a mandate to move to the next list and the next test. If response is greater than you typically receive from your current list, you have just found a gold mine. Acquire the rest of the list and put it to work.
It is easy to test two or more lists simultaneously. Simply tag the various lists you acquire and merge them together. As responses — either inquiries or orders — come in, ask the prospect or client for the code printed on the mailer, and tabulate the results.
Naturally, the offer you make in your solicitation influences response.
So, in this testing phase, you may wish to mail to your test group at the same time you mail to your current list. In this way, you will have a direct comparison of the effectiveness of the new lists against the current list.
