Marketing/Contacts Lists
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- SkyPoo
1. Anyone here buy lists or subscriptions for marketing purposes?
2. Anyone got any good or bad stories about any particular suppliers?
I realise this information may be considered confidential and people may not wish to disclose their marketing sources, but if anyone had any BAD stories of companies who's lists were bogus, out of date, or were in any other way flawed... it would be good to know.
- SkyPoo0
Okay, great... I'll proceed then!
= )
- johnnnnyh0
A friend of mine bought one - got no leads from it all. That's my only experience of them.
- SkyPoo0
Wow, that's pretty bad!
Dare I ask who's service he used?
- johnnnnyh0
Sorry, don't know where/who. I was shocked too since he'd paid for a marketing campaign to go with it - sent out leaflets etc, and got nothing from the whole exercise. At the time I was considering following his lead and doing the same thing as we have similar businesses (in different parts of the country) until he said it was a complete waste of time.
- I believe him as well - he didn't know I was sounding out whether it was going to work.johnnnnyh
- SkyPoo0
Hmmmm, velly interlesting. I've never done this before. I'm basically considering a year's subscription to a service that gives me access to amassive database of categorised contacts... art directors, art buyers, editorial commissioners etc.
I don't expect to get much immediate uptake, but bloody hell I would expect Something.
[instigate: Second thoughts]
- digdre0
I once bought one, back in the days I tried some affiliate marketing..
had about 450,000 mailing adresses, never used it, deleted it.
- johnnnnyh0
Yeah, I was like you. I'd thought about it and really considered it as part of a larger marketing strategy. But like most marketing perhaps you have to try different things and see what works for you. Since my friend was in a similar business selling similar products I reasoned it was not the way to go. It may, of course be better for you SkyPoo.
- alicetheblue0
maybe you could find such contacts
on the thing they call the I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T
;-0
- blaw0
@johnnnnnyh's friend -- There's more to it than just purchasing a list. Obviously the marketing/promotional materials have a large impact upon the success, but there are other elements as well. Was the list comprised of the appropriate demographic/target market? Were there defined goals/action items for the campaign? Were there follow up calls made to recipients?
A blind mailing is not exactly set up to succeed.
- SkyPoo0
Good call Blaw. The service I'm thinking of buying into offers a fully cross-referenceable database of contacts and can provide mass email ( I believe the kids call it Spum... or Span), individual email approaches, or postal for mail marketing.
- formed0
Lists don't really do much, even targeted ones.
Picking up the phone and making calls is still the best way. No one enjoys it (or I can't imagine how anyone could enjoy it).
Sending out blind, or even targeted, mailers is not a good way to get business (everything helps, but I would never count on getting work from it).
- johnnnnyh0
blaw, I agree, but I think this guy did do everything pretty well in that the services he offered were good and competitive. I'm sure his marketing material was of a high quality too. I can see there's more to it than just getting the brown envelopes out, and I don't know how good the list he had was, but again I suspect he researched it pretty well.
My thoughts are that this is not an entirely reliable method of marketing. We had two adds with Yell for a business at a cost of over £1000 and had no responses - don't really know why we had them now.