What can you do with a Saturation list?

Recently our team here at Tri Auto has been partnering with more and more ad agencies.  We offer a behind the scenes service providing all sorts of direct marketing - to make their lives easier and to share our expertise in automotive direct mail.  For many, saturation direct mail is something they don't have a lot of experience with and it helps to have a team behind them that has specialized in it for years.

That being said, I have had the same question twice in the past few days - "Don't you have to hit an entire zip code to use a saturation list?"

The short answer is-no.  In fact you can even target your mail within a zip code using actual demographic info.  So what's the deal?

• Each zip code is broken down into carrier routes.  It's just how it sounds, carriers = your mailman.  So imagine your mailman delivers to your neighborhood, the one down the road and two across the way.  That group of neighborhoods becomes a "carrier route."  It could be 50 homes or over 500, just depends on the market.
• To get the "saturation" discount you only have to hit whole carrier routes.  Some companies are set up better than others to handle this type of list selection.
• So what carrier routes do you choose?  This is where the demographics come in to play.  For each route we can show you the average home value, income and age for the area.  After a quick consultation with you on the market in question we can select the areas for you or you are welcome to do it yourself.

It's as easy as that.  So let's say there are 8,000 people in a zip code but you only want to do 5,000 mailers - no problem!  It is also easy to split those 5,000 mailers over three different zip codes as you like.

The main point of this post is to just let everyone know that saturation lists are becoming more and more effective and easy to use.  Katy Peat is the zip code diva on our team - she not only consults on what areas to mail to but can also share tips on avoiding certain pitfalls and using Marketvision data to help increase response on your future sales using the zip info from past ones.  If you have more questions feel free to email Katy today.