In brief, this website is about building up two databases:
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one of people who really like what you sell and are already buying or at least enquiring about your products
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the other is of people who ought to be buying from you, but for whatever reason are not. They might not appreciate the benefits of what you sell in general, they might be prejudiced against you, or they might be buying from the opposition.
This website is about converting those people who are not buying from you into buyers, for the least amount of money possible.
But that is not all. It is also about using these databases to find out exactly what your buyers have in common. Now you might think you know the answer to that - your buyers are, for example, directors in companies in the steel industry, or are teachers in primary schools, or maybe are proven donors to charities.
Those definitions are fine - but the techniques explored here allow you to refine these definitions further, offering you the chance to see that your buyers are not just (for example) primary school teachers, but are largely primary school teachers in bigger schools in certain parts of the country.
"Ah I see," you may say (or words to that effect), "but I've looked at this, and we sell to everyone in our sector. You can't separate it any further - everyone is a potential customer." That, you may be interested to know, is one of the most common answers we get to this point.
But consider this. Let us imagine you sell to building companies. You've been doing it for years and you know that during the course of a week you can sell to a one-man band who'll take on any small building contract in Orkney, to one of the giant house builders currently working in Peterborough, to a painter and decorator just outside Wrexham, and to a 20 man renovation company in Derby. Yes, you sell to everyone.
Except that this analysis doesn't tell you how much profit you make from each of these people - nor indeed how much it costs to market to them. An analysis of the type we are going to push towards here can end up looking like this:
60% of the addresses to which you mail your promotional material are businesses with under 5 staff. And 55% of your orders come from such businesses. Which makes it look as if your direct mail technique is fairly sound.
But looked at another way the answer might not be so straightforward.
60% of the addresses to which you mail your promotional material are businesses with under 5 staff. But their orders are generally so small that only 5% of your annual profit comes from those businesses. Which means you could cut your mailing by 60% and yet only lose 5% of your profit. True your turnover would go down - but your profit would actually go up because you would have cut your mailing costs by 60%.
Now that may or may not be an attractive idea - and indeed it may be an idea you need to look into a little more... perhaps considering only mailing that 60% once a year rather than four times a year at present - but whatever the outcome it is an issue you need to consider.
So that is where we get to - a way of establishing who your customers are, and of mailing to them as often as is beneficial to you. To continue please click on the arrow below.
 Your first list
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