Find the ‘Hidden’ List Market to Help Your Business Grow

By Jim Gilbert

Over the past few weeks, I’ve discussed extensively how to select the right list broker and the right lists for your offerings. This week, let’s explore a few ways to find lists that may not be on the rental market.

Not every company chooses to mail catalogs, and not every catalog company puts its list on the rental market. Naturally, these lists wouldn’t be on the typical list broker’s radar screen.

Sometimes, especially when you work in a tight niche market, you need to find new lists beyond what your list broker recommends. There are a number of catalog sources that you can use as reference to do some further list research.

The Sources

In no particular order, they include the following:

* Shop at Home (www.shopathome.com) is a catalog of catalogs that’s been put out for years by Belcaro Group. It has both prominent and some more obscure catalogs listed in its pages. The Web site provides a good research tool, too.

* Catalogs.com (www.catalogs.com) offers good descriptions of the catalogs it promotes, along with links to the catalogers’ Web sites, so you can do further research on product, price, etc., in order to see whether a catalog’s list may be a good fit for you.

* Greyhouse Publishing (www.greyhouse.com/marketing.htm) offers both online and offline research. Its Directory of Mail Order Catalogs is one of the largest catalog resources available.

* A great online sight I use is www.catalogs.google.com. What I like about this site is that it takes a catalog, scans the pages and allows you to look at each catalog listed by page, spread, etc.

Once you’ve identified some potential list sources, have your list broker contact them, because list brokers are the central point of reference for your list rental planning. Therefore, they should know which lists in total you’re mailing, and this will help them better help you in the long run.

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Jim Gilbert

Jim Gilbert Author's page Jim Gilbert has been creating direct marketing programs that drive superior ROI for almost 30 years. Fluent in consumer or B-to-B, creative, operations, and analytics, he marries the strategic and tactical sides of direct and social media marketing in a seamless fashion that gets results. He's CEO of a multidiscipline direct marketing agency, Gilbert Direct Marketing, Inc., which focuses on direct mail, catalogs, DRTV, telemarketing, print, alternative direct marketing media and social media marketing. Jim has been involved in start-ups, expansions and turnarounds, and is an expert in helping multichannel marketers get to the "next level." He's a former adjunct professor, teaching direct marketing at Miami International University, and is President of the Board of Directors of the Florida Direct Marketing Association. Jim loves to talk direct marketing, and has done many lectures on direct and social media marketing.