How to Find, Buy & Test a Mailing List

Dear Marketer,

Do you want to know a juicy little secret that 99% of all marketers don’t know?

I’ll tell you in a minute, but first, did you know that the experts in direct marketing say that there are 4 things that determine the success of any mailing? They are:

Though experts argue about the relative importance of each, the truth is, for optimum results, they’re all important. The "secret" is that 99% of all marketers either ignore the business mailing list selection and testing process or don’t know how to do it.

Here’s why it’s so important.

Even if you paid a world-class copywriter to write your headline, your copy and create an offer so amazing that no one could resist buying,

if you try to sell steaks to vegetarians,
it’s just not going to work!

When you are "fishing" for business, it helps if you are fishing in a pond that has fish in it. Then, and only then, is having the right "bait" an issue.

Now, that might seem like a ridiculous example, but many people do just this in ways that are just not quite as obvious. Here’s an example from one of the hundreds of mailings I’ve done. (I have plenty of mistakes to pick from).

Around 8 years ago the direct mail catalog company I had founded was doing quite well. We were selling children’s products (stickers & toys) to medical and dental offices and hospitals. It seemed to make sense that teachers of the same age children would want the same products too.

Excited about the prospects of another large market, and a bit cocky since everything was working so well, I got careless and sent out an untested 20,000-piece mailing to teachers without paying much attention to the list or the timing of my offer.

We Got 4 Orders!

Though the product was right for the market, it turned out that I mailed the wrong list at the wrong time with the wrong offer.

Even if you’ve done many mailings that worked, you are not immune to the need to follow the basics. What works for one market doesn’t necessarily work for another even if the end users (children in this case) are the same.

I’ve done more things wrong than I have right over the past 20+ years, but the one thing I have done right is to learn from my mistakes—and there has been an awful lot of learning going on around here.

The Two Rules To Follow Are:

Learn from Other People’s Mistakes—it’s a lot cheaper.

Don’t Make The Same Mistake More Than Once—there are plenty of new ones to make you haven’t made yet.

We’ve put this program together to give you the benefit of both my successes and failures. I don’t know about you, but I seem to learn better from failures than successes — sort of a sorry state of affairs if you ask me.

If you’ve used, or are considering, direct mail to build your business, selecting and testing a business mailing list properly can easily double, triple or even get you 10 times the results without changing what you mail.

If you have tried direct mail in the past and found it didn’t work for you, what I’m going to tell you may explain why and tell you what you can do about it.

If your current mailings are losing money, this could turn them around. If you are planning on trying mailings to get leads or make sales, this information can make the difference between them working or failing.

Experienced direct marketers already know this and this letter is not for them. If that’s you, stop now, you already know all this...this information is meant for business owners, marketing people or consultants who don’t have a direct marketing background and who don’t feel like reading textbooks full of statistics on mailing list analysis.

Here’s what this can mean to you...

Let’s say you are doing mailings to get leads for your salespeople. You are already tracking your costs and know, when all is said and done, that you are paying $75.00 for each lead.

How much difference would it make to your business if that cost per lead dropped to $25.00 or even lower and they converted to sales at the same rate?

How about if you are selling something by mail and your cost to get an order is $50.00, how would you like it to be $10.00 – 15.00 or less?

If you are not already a sophisticated mailer, improvements like this are definitely possible, even likely, once you apply the techniques I’ll explain later in this letter. And that’s not all,

What’s it worth to learn a simple calculation
that can tell you in 60 seconds
if a mailing has any chance of working
before you spend your money?

All you need to know is how to multiply and divide...

Here’s a little about me so that you know I have the experience to advise you. Over the last 24 years, I have started 5 companies that I built to national businesses. One of these was a direct mail catalog company that I started and built to having over 10,000 medical offices and hospitals as customers, and then sold to a larger competitor for a substantial amount of money.

Another was an Internet direct response web based company that I recently sold to a client, and a third was a printing company that I took from a start up to $12 million in sales in only 4 years by applying innovative production and marketing techniques.

This program assumes you’re not a direct mail expert and shows you some simple tools and techniques that can make a big difference in your results. There’s a 740-page text book on lists you can buy if you’re a statistician — but I give you the plain English simple summary of that information so you don’t have to read it.

This information applies to mailings of 100
as well as mailings of 10,000 or more

There are plenty of businesses that will help you if you are mailing in the millions and there are many analytical techniques you can use cost effectively. I don’t go there. If you are mailing huge quantities like that, you already know what you need to know or you wouldn’t be there.

This program is intended to help those who have never done a mailing, have done one and failed, or have done a few but don’t really know what they should to maximize their results.

Here Are Some More Things You’ll Learn

Did you know some list companies who, when you ask them for a random sample of a business mailing list, don’t give it to you? A salesperson who gets paid on commission has a financial incentive to give you "hot line" names that are more likely to respond so that you will reorder more names. This is unethical but there is no way to tell by looking at the list itself. I’ll show you a way to make sure this doesn’t happen to you and you can tell if it does in 30 seconds.

How about a lettershop (mailing company) that charges you for a 5,000-piece mailing and then only mails 3,000 but still charges you for 5,000 including postage. How would you ever know? They just increased their profits 1,000% because they charged you for postage they never bought. You will learn how to make sure this doesn’t happen. Having a receipt from the Post Office doesn’t protect you — I’ll explain why.

Did you know the Post Office has a big problem with mail carriers throwing out mail? Numerous studies by mailers, the Direct Marketing Association, and even the Post Office have shown that 10–30% of all properly addressed bulk mail never gets delivered. One study done by the Postal Service itself several years ago found properly addressed bulk mail frequently destroyed at all 111 Post Offices and 12 bulk mail distribution centers they checked.

When you don’t understand this stuff, you could conclude mailings can’t or won’t work for you, when they could have been your best source of new business.

This course is 2½ hours of info on 3 CD’s and comes with a binder full of worksheets, charts and examples of calculations, reference material, and a complete transcript of the CD’s separated by track.

Here’s More That You’ll Learn

The difference between a compiled list and a response list can make the difference between success and failure. There is a resource listing over 30,000+ response lists that most people have never heard of that’s in any major library.

How you can find out how much product your competitors are selling by mail, their average order and how many customers they have.

How you can legally find out which are the best-responding portions of a competitor’s list and then only rent those!

The 23 questions the experts ask about any list before buying it to maximize its chance of success.

How to see direct mail samples others in your industry are mailing. You can get copies of the actual mailing pieces to see what they are doing.

How to find a good list—and how to get a 20% discount on every business mailing list you buy.

What a list should cost—know the costs for different costs of lists so you don’t pay too much.

Why paying too little—for a list can be a guarantee of failure.

How to analyze a list so you can see if it’s worth testing.

What is a rate card and what you need to know about them.

Why the data on the rate card can be a lie.

The 3 most important characteristics of a business mailing list.

How the list format can affect the results of a mailing.

How the day of the week your mail is delivered can affect response.

When it’s best to mail first-class even if you might lose money.

The best months of the year and the worst—and how to account for the differences.

What list almost always works.

How to get the best postage rates.

How to track a list so you can get results you can use to make decisions.

How to test a list—mess this up and you can’t use the results.

How to interpret the results—if you do this wrong you could roll out a successful test and lose a lot of money.

How big a sample to mail. The size of the mailing doesn’t matter, it’s the number of responses; here’s how to calculate what you need.

How to tell the likely range of responses you can expect on a rollout of a test—if the range is unacceptably broad, it shows you how many more to mail to reduce your rollout risks.

What the half-life of a mailing list is and why knowing it can double or triple your results.

The 10 biggest mistakes even experienced marketers make with lists and how to make sure you don’t make them.

Determining the lifetime value of a customer and why it’s important to know before you do a mailing.

How list profiling can make a losing mailing profitable.

Knowing if a list has a high duplication rate with your current customer list and why high duplication rates are a good thing.

How to test more than one variable at a time and get statistically valid results.

Where you can go to get samples of all your major competitors’ lists. It can be very helpful to see what a competitor mailed and how many times before you plan your mailing.

How often to mail your customer list.

How to double or triple the response rate of a mailing without changing what you mail—this technique is only used by the most sophisticated mailers but it’s easy to do once you know how.

How not understanding the numbers can cause you to lose money on a list that could have been profitable.

So what’s this all worth to you? In the case of the example of where I messed up mentioned before, knowing all this would have saved me $12,000 on just that one mailing.

Even a small mailing could easily cost $500 – $1,000 or more. Increasing the response can make the difference between it being a new source of business for you or a black hole for money.

This program only costs $197 and you can easily save many times that in your very next mailing if you only use just a small part of this information.

But that’s not all, you also get a

12-Month No-Risk
100% Money-Back Guarantee!

If you’re unhappy, for any reason, just ship the package back to me and I will refund all your money. (Minus the small shipping and handling costs, of course.) I will treat you the way I wish people treated me—with gracious trust and the benefit of the doubt.

You do not need to give a reason for returning the material for a refund. Your word is good enough.

That means...you will not have paid a cent for this information, unless you decide to keep it. And that means...

You Will Have Seen Everything
Almost For Free!

All you’re out is the tiny shipping and handling costs. That’s spare change. And yet it gives you the chance to see all the secrets, all the tactics, all the insider techniques, and all the tricks world-class marketers rely on for their wealth.

But that’s still not all, to make this even better than risk-free, order NOW and you’ll also get:

$684 Free Bonuses For Orders
Before Thursday, January 12, 2006

My deals with Edith Roman and my lettershop/printer on the free mailing list names and mailing services discount are very short-term tests and I cannot guarantee it will be still in effect any longer than the next few days — after which they will evaluate their results and decide whether to continue it.

You also get some bonus reports for ordering promptly. Some of the information goes beyond list topics but will be very helpful to you if you plan to do any mailings. You get:

Free Report — How I used a mailing that was profitable at a 0% response to start a $1 million company, $27 value.

Free Report — How a Mailing that had a break-even of 1% got a 30% response, a $17 value.

1,000 FREE Leads From Edith Roman — one of the industry’s leading response list providers—when you buy a minimum order of 5,000 names. $120 to $160 value.

Production Of One Mailing of up to 2,500 pieces at ½ price (printing & letter shop services) from the lettershop/printer we use. Value from $100 to $1,000
depending on what and how many you mail.

Cost for the How to Find, Buy & Test a Mailing List 3 CD Program, the booklet with all the charts, references and calculations you need and the free bonuses listed above is only $197.00.

Don’t do another mailing without this program—you’ll just be throwing your money away! Order right now before you forget to get the bonuses that are worth 3 times this entire program. They are services you’ll need anyway if you’re going to do a mailing!

To Your Success,

Joe McVoy
President

PS: You get to keep the free names voucher and the discount lettershop & printing voucher even if you return the program, so you get $600 + of value just for taking the time to look at this program.

PPS: Even if you only use the cheapest leads from Edith Roman and do a small postcard mailing with my lettershop & printer, the value of those 2 free gifts and the reports is still $264.00 (which is $67.00 more in free services than this program costs—in other words—this program is essentially free!)