Find the ‘Hidden’ List Market to Help Your Business Grow
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.
Jim Gilbert has had a storied career in direct and digital marketing resulting in a burning desire to tell stories that educate, inform, and inspire marketers to new heights of success.
After years of marketing consulting, Jim decided it was time to “put his money where his mouth was" and build his own e-commerce company, Premo Natural Products, with its flagship product, Premo Guard Bed Bug & Mite Sprays. Premo in its second year is poised to eclipse 100 percent growth.
Jim has been writing for Target Marketing Group since 2006, first on the pages of Catalog Success Magazine, then as the first blogger for its online division. Jim continues to write for Total Retail.
Along the way, Jim has led the Florida Direct Marketing Association as their Marketing Chair and then three-term President, been an Adjunct Professor of Direct and Digital marketing for Miami International University, and created a lecture series, “The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing,” which he has presented across the country at conferences and universities.
