I was wondering if anyone uses a mailing list company from the internet, I am just starting out and I want to target smaller companies like hairdressers, beauticians, delicatessen's, florists etc but I am thinking it will be better to approach them in a more friendlier manner i.e addressing the letter to the business owner and not just sir/madam, I don't want to waste my money with a cowboy operation so I am looking for a reputable company where the lists are professionally maintained and updated and reliable.
I must admit its a little daunting taking the plunge and I am probably best to just take addresses out of the yellow pages to keep costs down, any advice would be appreciated.
Keeping costs down is probably a good idea, you have to find the right balance between advertising costs and realistic possible income...not an easy task. I signed up with Google Adwords and with hardly any cost I was able to get a few clients through them but it does not mean it works everywhere in the country...
I use a mailing list from selectabase. They send me lists of new businesses starting in my area on a monthly basis. It works out about 50 per month for where I am. It costs me about £45 per month.
I signed up for 6 months and I've found it alright. The biggest issues I've found are:
You can have the best mailing list in the world, if the mailing you send is not interesting for the recipient you'll get no where.
Most small businesses believe that they can and will do their own bookkeeping, therefore I find newstarts are not great. Personally I will be looking at contacting businesses aged between 6 months and 1 year old. At this point they probably will be starting to realise that doing it themselves isn't working.
An idea might be to find someone offering services to the same client base, perhaps a printer or similar and split the costs of buying a mailing list. I'm sure its a grey area, but so many things are and if you don't shout about it I don't think the mailing list company will ever know.
Good Luck
Kris
PS Attila is right, just because something works for one business doesn't mean it will work for others. I spent a small fortune on adwords and got nothing from it.
The views expressed in this post are my own personal (HRA protected) views, and are not representative of any organisation I have any involvement with.
Thank you for the advice, I have heard the mailing companies put a dummy address within your list i.e someone that works for the company, so they make sure you are only using the name once only, very clever!! but annoying!! so unfortunately splitting a list wouldn't work. you are right about new businesses, I contact a new delicatessen in my area and they said they would give it a go themselves, so maybe your right contacting the businesses 6 months to a year old, I wonder if a mailing company could give you this information so that you target the right companies??
Lisa
Thank you Attila, I will have a look into google adwords but like you have both mentioned what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for someone else unfortunately
I cant see why they shouldn't be able to. My lists have a business start date on them, its just a case of them searching for all businesses that started 6 months ago, or whatever. These guys are here to sell you any list you'll part with cash for. Not come across the fake data, I'd be annoyed if I did, I don't pay for fake data to waste my time with.
The views expressed in this post are my own personal (HRA protected) views, and are not representative of any organisation I have any involvement with.
Google Adwords - 3 clicks I had so far, 2 of them converted to client. Believe me I was more surprised than anyone... I did not pay for Adwords, got an 80 pounds voucher from somewhere to spend it on google ads. In fact I would have never paid for G Ads and would never click on paid ads myself but it looks like it worked so far. Those 3 clicks were about 4 pounds each, seems to be a lot of bookkeepers/accountants using it in the area I live.
The views expressed in this post are my own personal (HRA protected) views, and are not representative of any organisation I have any involvement with.
Just to add an extra suggestion - Google Ads, facebook ads and LinkedIn ads often run free/low cost advertising special offers for small businesses (small in the sense of 1-3 ish people, rather than in the HMRC definition).
Keep an eye out as they are a great way of testing a method of advertising with a low initial input of only a bit of time.
