Finding New Customers by Identifying the Right Residential Database

Looking for new customers?

Most businesses are, especially with the current economic malaise. Do you provide products or services directly to consumers? If so then identifying a qualified residential database is the first place to start.

Research consistently confirms that the most important characteristic of any attempt to attract new customer is the quality of the database.

How do you get started identifying the right database? When a business is locally based, then geography is certainly the first place to start. Those new to purchasing lists think in terms of zip code, city or county, but one of the most efficient ways to target prospects in a local area is to target potential customers with a certain radius of a business.

What else do you need to know about geography? The most basic classification within a residential database is to segment by owners versus renters. It’s common to exclude renters from a list because homeowners are often considered a more stable and financially secure target audience. Within the ranks of homeowners, the next basic split is between single-family homeowners and multi-unit owners (a.k.a. condo owners). Someone that’s trying to grow their landscaping business would be very interested in single-family homeowners, but not at all interested in people living in a high rise or condo.

What about targeting by income? Again, novices looking for lists gravitate toward targeting prospects based on their income level. My advice is to be very careful here, especially for those targeting an older demographic. In many cases, using assessed property value is a more accurate measure of wealth than income. Someone may have a net worth in excess of $10 million dollars, but may report very little or no actual income because they are retired. In this scenario, assessed property value offers a much better criteria for qualifying the purchase power of the prospect.

Wealth modeling is another technique that can be used to determine an individual’s net worth. In this scenario, a variety of factors are combined to estimate someone’s wealth; these include income, property value, investments, chartable donations, and purchase history. Again, this is typically a superior way to target wealthy individuals instead of looking at income alone.

Is the mailing list really that important? According to John Coe, author of The Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales & Marketing 50% -70% of the success of a mailing campaign is determined by the mailing list. In my experience as a direct mail professional, I can attest to the fact that the mailing list is the single most important factor in determining the success of a direct mail campaign, and it is, unfortunately, the element of the campaign that is most often neglected or overlooked.

Click here to learn about using psychographics and lifestyle mailing lists as an alternate way to target prospects. Please take a moment to share your comments or questions below.