Most
people see a mailing list as a simple collection of names and addresses. We see
a mailing list as an opportunity to know your customers or recipients better.
This knowledge makes it possible to focus your message, promotions or appeals
to match and provide more value to the recipient. And, making your communication
valuable is key to increasing response rates, selling more products and
services, receiving more donations, acquiring new customers…whatever your
communication goal might be. In the following, we explore some of the “gold”
you can get from your mailing list.
Geographic
Location
– The town or city and street addresses provide you details such as the school
district, local schools, voting district, fire and tax districts, cable, water,
sewer and utility companies, etc. for those addresses.
Location
Demographics
– While a town/city and street addresses provides specific information about locations
they also give a reasonable idea about the demographics of those living at
those locations. For example, it’s easy to identify the relative affluence of
neighborhoods or different areas. This information then suggests with
reasonable certainty characteristics such as minimum annual income, typical
education level, home value, etc. Regardless the business, this if often very
valuable to identify target audiences or target areas.
Residence
type
– Residence type (apartment versus single family home) often provides good clues
about a person’s lifestyle. For example, apartment dwellers typically do not
own lawn mowers or have need for landscaping, roofing, plumbing or electrical services.
The opposite is true for those living in single family dwellings. Addresses
that include “Apt.”, “Bldg.”, “Unit”, etc. are most likely apartments and may be
identified as such by the USPS address processing software.
Prefixes – Prefixes can tell
you about the recipient’s gender, likely marital status, education level and
occupation. “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, “Miss” and “Ms.” are dead giveaways for gender and potential
indicators of marital status for women (don’t take the marital status as a
certainty, however). “Rev”, “Fr” (Father), “Dr”, “Atty”, “Prof”, Hon
(Honorable) and the whole gamut of military ranks provide good clues about
occupation and possibly education level.
Suffixes - Suffixes are sometimes
called post nominal letters meaning “letters after the name”. They might start
to look like alphabet soup, but they can tell you a lot about the recipient. Some
common suffixes include “J.D.” and “Esq. (lawyers), “MD”, “OD”, “DO” and “DMD”
(doctors), “CPA”, “CMA” and “ABA” (accountants)…and there are hundreds more! Suffixes
provide very specific detail about occupation and education level which can be
assumed to a relative gauge of income level and other characteristics.
Gender – Having a gender
field (male/female or M/F) in a mailing list is a huge benefit since gender is
a major differentiation for many communications. It might be sexist, but very
few men like to shop for women’s undergarments. Similarly, not many women shop
for hi-performance truck accessories. If your mailing list doesn’t have a
gender field, there are techniques for creating one from the addressees’ names.
Do
you ask customers about their mailing lists? Some of them might be quite
interested to know more about their customer base or their market. This
information helps determine if they are sending the wrong message, sending to
the wrong audience or missing a key element to get more attention or business.
You simply can’t know without mining the gold from a mailing list.
We
can help you with this. PrintShopMarketing.com
