SeminarSavvy.com

You’ve seen the ads — “9 million mailing addresses for just $24.99.” You’re tempted to buy … because surely somewhere among those millions of prospects, there must be a hundred people or so who would be interested in your seminar.

Alas, the results don’t prove your theory true.   

Quality, not quantity, is what counts when you’re building your seminar business. Yes, it is important to grow your list, because at some level, seminar promotion becomes a game of numbers. Once you’ve achieved a fairly predictable level of response with your promotions, growing your business becomes a matter of getting in front of more people.

Until you reach a certain level of success, though, it’s highly critical to be choosy about who you’re reaching. If you market to a poor quality list, you risk getting horrid results. Although an established business can absorb the financial loss of the occasional bad promotion, it’s much more difficult for a newer business to recover from the loss.

In addition to improving the chances of generating a profit, choosing a highly qualified mailing list also helps future promotions. A better list will provide more — and more accurate — data about what works when promoting your event.

For example, imagine that you want to test a direct mail invitation vs. a postcard when promoting your free lead-generation event. If you market to a huge list of people who have given zero indication that they might be qualified to attend your event, you can expect that virtually no one will respond. As a result, you won’t get any meaningful data that will help you determine which marketing tool is most effective.

On the other hand, if you promote your seminar to a list of highly qualified prospects — people whose demographic profile or affiliations match those of your ideal prospect — you should generate enough data to make a sound decision about how to promote your seminars moving forward.

When evaluating mailing lists to rent or buy, look at factors such as:
* Age
* Education
* Job title
* Industry or profession
* Income
* Geographic location
* Past purchases
* Memberships
* Subscriptions

Once you do find a list or two that looks interesting, you might be tempted to rent the whole thing. Instead, rent a small list. Test your mailing. If the list produces enough registrations to cover your cost and generate a profit, rent more names from the same list.

If you’ve never rented a list before, be aware that most list owners require that a minimum number of names be rented (e.g., 5,000 names). Some marketers consider 5,000 names to be a small list; for others, it’s mind-boggling big.

If you fall into the latter camp, ask the list manager or broker if you can rent half the list two times to make up the minimum order size (e.g., rent 2,500 names to make up a 5,000-name list minimum). That way, you’ll have the names needed to do a second mailing (Want to run a test? See for yourself how effective it is to send more than one promotion. Send half of your list one promotion only, and send the second half two promotions.)

You also can ask permission to rent two smaller test lists (e.g., 2,500 names from List A and 2,500 names from List B) to make up the minimum. Some owners will say yes. Others will say no. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

To fill your seminars, it’s essential to keep expanding your reach. Make sure you’re investing your marketing dollars into qualified lists to position yourself to receive a positive return on your investment.

When working with a limited budget, you need to make tough decisions about where you want to invest your marketing dollars. If you have enough funds to send a single direct mail package to your entire list or three direct mail packages to a third of your list, it makes sense to carefully choose who is “worthy” of receiving your direct mail package — in other words, who is most likely to respond to your offer.

Candidates for the “A” list could include people who have recently joined your list, customers who have purchased within the past six months, prospects within driving distance of your event, and your most loyal clients. You’d spend the most marketing dollars on these prospects, while relying on free and low-cost tools to reach your B-quality prospects.

While segmenting your database, you might be tempted to delete the oldest and least responsive names. After all, why waste time and money contacting them if they obviously aren’t interested in participating in your events?

It’s true that removing inactive prospects from your list can free up marketing dollars which then can be devoted to reaching more responsive customers.

However, don’t delete the names. Keep them in a separate sublist if you must. But don’t get rid of the names entirely. You never know when someone will be ready to attend your event. If you delete the names, you may miss the opportunity to make a sale. Plus, even if these prospects haven’t bought in years, it’s entirely possible that they’re referring colleagues and friends to you events.

The bottom line is that you’ve worked hard for every lead in your database. Although you may want to reduce the amount of time and money you spend marketing to the least responsive segments of your databse, don’t eliminate them from your list entirely. Instead, mail to them occasionally — once a year even — to gently remind them that you’re still around.