How to target your best prospects

By Monte Enbysk

You can't stop marketing your business, even when dollars are tough to come by.

In fact, businesses just starting out or those slowly recovering from the economic downturn must devote at least some of their precious resources to prospecting for new customers. Competition for customers is as keen as it will ever get right now. And the cost of reaching these prospects remains relatively low.

"This is not a time to keep a low profile," says Alexis Gutzman, author, columnist and managing editor of reports for MarketingSherpa.com, a resource site for marketers. "Resources are inexpensive right now. This is a time for building your customer base. This is a time for establishing relationships."

Direct mail is effective

One of the leading ways larger companies achieve this is by purchasing mailing lists of qualified customers from customer data companies. With that in mind, Microsoft Small Business has teamed with infoUSA to provide users with lists of qualified sales leads — both business-to-business and business-to-consumer — to small and midsized businesses. InfoUSA, founded in 1972, is a leading provider of business and consumer data today.

The Internet has helped level the playing field in this arena, making it possible to affordably search through databases of 14 million U.S. businesses and 250 million consumers, such as those offered by infoUSA. The infoUSA data is compiled, verified and consistently updated by a team of about 500 people at Omaha, Neb.-based infoUSA's data center. Because of the high accuracy rate of the data, you avoid wasting precious marketing dollars on outdated or incorrect information — or on lists filled with unqualified leads.

"We've grown up serving the small-business market," says Monica Messer, infoUSA's chief operations officer and the president of the company's database and technology group. "We've made it easy for them to do their own research and to customize their mailing lists at affordable prices. For a small business, the accuracy of this data is so important."

Here's what you get

What kind of information can you get from these mailing lists?

If you're looking for other businesses, you can get a list via a Microsoft Excel file that includes each prospect's business name, contact name, line of business and current address, city, state and ZIP code. This list can be easily downloaded onto mailing labels for direct-mail campaigns.

For an additional cost, you get much more: phone number, fax number, Web site address, names of the owner, CEO and top managers, as well as number of employees, years in business, sales volume and even number of PCs and square-footage of the company's building.

Similarly, for consumer leads, for a basic minimum, you get a qualified prospect's name, address and type of residence. For an additional cost, you get a phone number plus such information as marital status, age, size of household, household income, homeowner or renter, average home value, whether the household includes children, whether it includes pets, whether it has Internet users, hobbies and interests (if available).

All of the data is compiled from publicly available records, and then verified by a telephone call. The information for business leads comes from telephone books, business and government directories, Web sites and public company filings, among other sources, while the consumer information emanates mostly from phone books and online and off-line surveys, according to Rakesh Gupta, president of infoUSA.com, the company's Web operations.

Messer says that hundreds of employees in infoUSA's data center compile the public information and then take the time to verify and update the data by calling many of people listed. The enhanced information that is voluntarily provided by the potential business or consumer lead becomes part of infoUSA's core database. Businesses and consumers have a right to say no to providing enhanced information, Messer says, adding, "We have only a 4% refusal rate."

Note: E-mail addresses are not provided to users by infoUSA, in an effort to protect against widespread unsolicited e-mails, Gupta says. But infoUSA will send out e-mail promotions on your behalf. More on this below.

An example of the cost

The infoUSA database enables you to target your business mailing lists by industry, profession, business type, location (state, county, metro area, ZIP code or area code), credit rating and other factors. Your consumer list can be devised by location, age, household income and estimated home value.

Costs of the lists you purchase vary generally by the size of the list, and whether you seek the basic mailing list or the list plus a complete database for each lead.

For example, I did a search for all midsized automotive dealers in Los Angeles County — those with 20 to 100 employees. The list totaled 616. Cost of purchasing the basic mailing list for the auto dealers was just over $400, and the mailing list with a complete database for all 616 leads was slightly more than $500.

In searching consumer leads, I targeted homeowners aged 30-49 in southern Orlando, Fla. (area code 321), with at least $140,000 in household income and homes valued at $200,000 and above. I came up with 608 leads. The basic list with printed mailing labels was less than $100 by regular mail and less than $130 for electronic delivery. (There are additional options available as well.)

Here's how to use the leads

So, how should you use this information? Direct-mail campaigns to a targeted audience work best when combined with telemarketing efforts, marketing experts say. "We advocate targeted direct marketing," says Messer. "What we love to see our customers do is a direct mailing, followed up by a telephone call. Once a month, businesses also should send their customers and prospects an e-mail promotion."

This is a formula that has worked well for infoUSA customers for several years now, she says. InfoUSA has more than 4 million customers today, of which approximately 80% are small businesses. (Besides providing sales leads, it also publishes the Polk City Directories, credit reports and numerous other directories and lists.)

But direct mail remains the linchpin of campaigns — most infoUSA customers still utilize direct mail for more than 50% of marketing, Messer says. "The industry is still predominantly direct mail. You've got to keep doing what works for you."

E-mail marketing is growing rapidly, however, at the expense of direct mail, according to research-firm studies. But e-mail marketing also is not without its pitfalls, not the least of which is the harm caused by disreputable marketers (and the ensuing crackdown on them by the Federal Trade Commission and state governments).

InfoUSA offers a separate e-mail marketing service, in which it sends out the mailings itself. It does not provide the e-mail addresses to customers. "It's been our policy not to release that data," Messer says. "We control the usage of it. We monitor it very closely," and customers are limited to a certain number of mailings a month. "As a traditional, well-regarded and respected company, we don't want to be known as a spam provider."

However, smart use of e-mail marketing can greatly enhance campaigns, she adds. "It's a great tool, for example, to test different prices or promotions. You can send out a mailing to a percentage of your customer base and gauge the feedback."

Marketing expert Gutzman agrees. She urges marketers not to buy e-mail marketing lists, because of the high likelihood they contain people who don't want to be on the list. A better way to go, she says, is to advertise in the e-mail newsletters that reach the people you want to reach.

At any rate, Messer says, "Small businesses can't stop marketing. You've got to keep finding new customers." The Web has made sales leads easier than ever to get, and worth every penny you spend on them.