What’s In Your Mailing List?

A mailing list is much more than a simple collection of names and addresses. It’s a goldmine of valuable information about your contacts. You can use that information to better understand your customers and market to increase response rates, sell more, receive more donations, acquiring new customers…whatever the goal of your communication may be. What kind of information can you find? Following are some of the types of information you can extract from your mailing list(s). As you read these, consider how you might use this the information to provide more value to customers, donors, etc. Geographical demographics - Addresses can tell you with certainty details such as school, voting, fire and tax districts, cable, water, sewer and utility companies, etc. Addresses can also give you a reasonable idea about minimum annual income, minimum education level, home value, lifestyle, etc. Use this information to refine your messages to different audiences. Residence type – In general, people living in apartments tend to be different from those living in single-family homes. Apartment dwellers are more likely to be unmarried, to be younger, to have no pets and to not own a lawn mower. If you sell lawn mowers you might eliminate those addresses that include likely apartment addresses such as “Apt.”, “Bldg.”, “Unit”, etc. Prefixes - These can tell you a lot about marital status, gender and occupation. “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, “Miss” and “Ms.” are dead giveaways for gender. Some other informative prefixes include “Rev”, “Fr” (Father), “Dr”, “Atty”, “Prof”, Hon (Honorable) and the whole gamut of military ranks. Suffixes – These are sometimes called post nominal letters meaning “letters after the name”. They can look like alphabet soup, but they can also tell you a lot about the recipient. Some common suffixes include “J.D.” and “Esq. (lawyers), “MD”, “OD”, “DO” and “DMD” (doctors), “CPA”, “CMA” and “ABA” (accountants)…oh, this seems endless! You get the idea. A single, female lawyer living in an apartment in an upscale area often has many differing interests and needs compared to a married woman living in a rural single-family home. If you have different products or a different messages for these two types of women, then you should be taking a closer look at your mailing list. We can help do this. More importantly, we can show you how to use this information to make your communications more efficient and effective.