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.

Mailing to Credit Score Lists

The credit score list had become a relic around here until about a month ago. As lenders begin to (slightly) loosen up so does the subprime market. However, credit score lists don't have to be the only way to target these people, here are a few other ideas.

Credit Score Lists

Expense: $$$

Pros: targeting specific scores, weeding out too low scores, ability to make a firm offer of credit on the mailer

Cons: expense, reliability of data (lists are always 2-4 wks old by the time mail hits the home), disclaimer hell-legal fine print required with this list can sometimes take up half the mailer

Income Lists

Expense: $$

Pros: ability to target income ranges for credit purposes, more mail for your dollar, fewer legal hoops with disclaimers and piece restrictions

Cons: data is self reported so is not always highly reliable

Saturation List with Average Income

Expense: $

Pros: very inexpensive/a lot more mail for your money, the typical mail responder is in the credit bracket most dealers would target, you could get in the occasional prime customer as well,

can still address most customers by name (instead of "current resident"), no legal restrictions or disclaimers regarding the list needed

Cons: income information is an average by neighborhood (could be large variances)

In most cases I recommend sticking with the targeted saturation lists. The difference in price can be staggering and the traffic that comes in can be "filtered" by the content of the mailer. That being said, list selection is very unique to each campaign, dealership & market. Please discuss what's best for your specific mailer with your mail specialists (...and yes, the Diva is accepting new clients).

Happy Friday!

*New Product Alert* Saturation Emails

Good morning all-just wanted to get the word out about a brand new program we're offering at Tri Auto! As most of my readers know we already offered personalized emails to your database or MarketVision list of emails. We typically send 3-4 different messages depending on the different groups of leads. For example people who purchased recently would get a service offer, while those that haven't bought in a few years would get a more sales focused email. However, now we can also do basically what we sometimes do with mail-saturate your market via email. I'll be honest, we've had the opportunity to get into this market before and have declined-there are a lot of shady ways to send out emails and we wanted to make sure we were keeping our clients compliant with phishing & spamming laws. Through a lot of diligence and searching we've found a way to do this for our dealers. I'll blog later on the best uses for saturation emails-but they are a great way to boost traffic to your next event type sale, database mailer or VIP event. You can saturate your entire market for pennies per email. Let me know if you want to talk in more detail on this new product.

Did you know you can target a saturation list?

I'm still surprised about how many people don't know about the new possibilities with your good old fashioned saturation/current res list. Early this year several new functions were made available and they are really increasing the response on these mailers, and can also affect the quality of traffic coming in if they are used correctly. The first new addition is a "names where available" feature. This does cost a fraction of a penny more to use, but I just throw it in on all mailers-it's worth it for the increased results. Basically an average of 80% of the list will have the person's name instead of just "current resident" or "future satisfied customer," etc. We can pull a list count ahead of time so you'll know the exact amount of names available in your market. It's typically pretty close to 80% though. So what does that mean for you!? For one thing it's more personal to the person getting the mailer, which gains their attention and makes them more likely to respond. Secondly, if you like to do the flashy mailers with the person's name all over it (aka Variable Data) this makes that such a more affordable option! You no longer have to pay the postage hike and additional charge for a names list. Brilliant! Finally the other fantastic new option on the saturation lists are...average demographics! We all know there are certain areas in every market that aren't worth your marketing dollar when it comes to different media. This list now allows you to target parts of zip codes and decide whether or not to use them. Each zip is broken into carrier routes (for example your mail carrier delivers to your neighborhood, the one across the street and the one down the road), we can then look at the average age, income and home value for each route. It's a great way to really target your market without paying for the pricey lists and postage. To my knowledge this should be available to all list providers. If you haven't heard about it from your direct mail consultant, it's definitely worth a quick conversation. If you're look for a new consultant feel free to contact me. Happy Friday, have a fantastic weekend!