Mail Lists for Direct Mail Campaigns

Here at PSS Mailing Solutions, we work with many businesses, organizations, and companies when it come to design, print, and mail. Often businesses are lost as to how to start using direct mail, especially when it comes to the first step: mail lists.

It can be difficult to know where to start if you don’t know your target audience. One of the first questions we ask a potential or long-standing client is if they have a mail list or if they will need one purchased.

If you already have a mail list, which includes the names and addresses where you plan to mail, we can quickly move on to a few other questions. If you do not have one yet, the next question is do you want to send it to specific people or would you like to send to a specific area.

What’s the Difference?

An example client for this may be a car wash. If a car wash has just been built in a new area or town, they may want to send a postcard to all homes within certain postal routes offering a free car wash. This gets everyone in the area into the car wash, so they can see it for themselves. For this type of direct mail, a specific list is not required because you would be sending an EDDM (Every Door Direct Mailer with the USPS) out to specific postal routes within zip codes.

Now, let’s say that this car wash is one with monthly subscriptions to come wash your car as often as you want, at whichever package you want, for a price. This same car wash now may want to mail to houses within a one-mile radius, but only those homes that have an income over $50,000. For this, a mail list would need to be purchased.

When you’re thinking about using a mail list, you can put quite a few parameters on it: income, location, number of people in household, age, education status, etc. Depending on your business, company, or organization, the demographics you choose can vary widely.  A local college may want to mail to all households with someone the age of 17 – 24 within a 15-mile radius. A non-profit organization who focuses on animals may want to mail to all households who own a pet within a certain zip code.

Mail lists matter. Often people believe that whatever offer or topic they are discussing on their mail piece is of most importance. However, if you don’t mail it out to the people whom you want to be your target audience, no matter how great the mail piece is, you may never receive a response. For instance, if I received a letter in the mail from a daycare in California, I would have no interest – as I live in Iowa and do not have any children under the age of 10. Your target audience is of utmost importance.

How do you get a mail list?

If you work with PSS Mailing Solutions, we have two possible ways to provide a mail list. The first is that we work on it in-house. Our client manager can work on a simple mail list for you if you are looking for geographical locations as well as income levels. We can do other simple mail lists right here, and ones we can complete in-house save you money.

However, if you have more complicated demographics, which may very well be necessary, we contact our mail list provider. They can go much more in-depth with the demographics, stacking them one on top of another until we get the perfect mail list for you.

Mail lists can be purchased for one-time use, or they can be purchased for multiple uses within a year (up to three times) and the pricing difference reflects that. Finally, mail lists must stay with the mail provider (PSS Mailing Solutions), so we can keep track of the number of uses, move updates, etc. I almost always recommend a multiple use mail list as the more touches you have with potential clients, the more likely they are to use you. However, there are cases where a one-time use works best too.

If you are thinking about sending out direct mail to your clients, start by asking us questions! We would love to help you reach your target audience by providing a solid mail list to start. You can also check out our mail services page to better understand the different mailing services we offer. 

PSS Mailing Solutions is located in Davenport, Iowa, which is part of Quad Cities, but we work with clients from all over the United States.