# Mailing List Questions



## jeron (Jul 16, 2012)

Hey everyone. I would like to try out direct marketing via direct mail to some of the businesses in my area. I know I could look everyone up myself and compile a list. But I want to try it out with about 250 businesses to start. that seems like a lot to do myself with just google.

To start, i have no problem sending out the flyers myself. I mainly want to test it out with a few hundred and see what the response rate is. If it works out well I would consider hiring a one stop shop to print the flyers and also mail them. But to keep the costs down the most to test things I'll mail them myself.

My main question is where is the best place to get the mailing list? I've looked around and am really confused. I have a place that will print the flyers for me. I just need to find the place that will produce a targeted list of businesses around my local area.

Any help with this would be awesome!!


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## jeron (Jul 16, 2012)

Bump, 

Anyone have any ideas?


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## BidsMaven (Sep 23, 2011)

Check out InfoUSA | Mailing Lists | Email Marketing Lists | Business | Sales Leads | Consumer


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## jrsc (Aug 9, 2009)

I've had some experience with this since another part of our business is printing and direct mail. Buying business mail lists is a bit problematic. I've found that they are usually out of date or inaccurate. The other problem with a purchased list is they are usually only licensed for one time use. Getting the list really is the hardest part, but if you can get that part direct mail is one of the more effective marketing tools. On a side note, mailing them yourself might actually cost you more. Many print shops have the software to do proper postal presorting and barcoding so they can mail bulk mail for you. It saves over 20 cents in postage which many times more than makes up for the print costs.


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## jeron (Jul 16, 2012)

Thanks for the input guys.

Anyone have any other places i can look into??


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## SunEmbroidery (Oct 18, 2007)

You might check with your local SBA office. When I started an SBA representative told be about a reference in the local library that listed all newly registered businesses. They might have other tips to suggest. If you have a local chamber of commerce you might might consider contacting members. Our local chamber lists members by business (including contact information). I hope you have a good response although I'll add that I tried direct marketing when I started and the cost wasn't worth it for me. I think its important for there to be a need and for you to satisfy that need. Part of the reason direct marketing didn't work for me was there were plenty of "hidden" competitors who already had an "in" so the need wasn't there.


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## David09 (Oct 2, 2015)

What is your actual targeted business ?


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## jeron (Jul 16, 2012)

Any business. I do custom printing. I don't have my own line of shirts, i print whatever my customers want on their shirts to help promote their business or event. 

So really any business, club, school, team, person, etc, that needs a logo, company name, event details, etc, printed on shirts or other stuff. That is who my preferred and main customers are. 

Just wanted to start with businesses because they are always the ones that need things like this more regularly.


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## Izzybee (May 6, 2015)

I go to my local Chamber of Commerce websites and local builders associations to get addresses. This gives me a chance to check out the business first, if they have a website, to see if they are even a good prospect, because sometimes they aren't .


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## Blue92 (Oct 8, 2010)

The department of state government may have a web site that lets you pull lists. I did that awhile back and converted the list into Excel.


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## Rankin Textile (Feb 17, 2016)

Local Chamber and google searches. You would be surprised how fast you can put together a list of 250 local businesses doing a google search. The you can target the ones you want and dont want and its free.


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## jasonwolf4u (Feb 24, 2016)

I think it’s good to find a vendor who can hold a good campaign. The advantage we have when giving the campaign to them is that they will have the enough mailing lists that suit our industry. I have approached a direct mail marketing services company in Toronto called Troi Mailing Services for a campaign for my baby shop business three months before and it gained me a satisfying amount of customers. So I would suggest you approach any such vendors.


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