Postal marketing data to connect with the business decision makers you want to target

More Than Word’s business to business mailing list contains decision makers at over 3,000,000 UK companies across 2,000 different sectors.

But is postal mail marketing still relevant?

Yes – in 2021, total expenditure on direct mail advertising in the UK is expected to reach £1.13bn.

In 2013, expenditure was £2.13bn – the number of companies investing in it has fallen by nearly half in under ten years as businesses divert expenditure into other forms of direct and online marketing.

However, the halving of spending on direct mail marketing has led to an increase in the number of responses.

The latest figures for interaction with direct mail marketing indicate that:

• 82% of business managers open the direct marketing mail they receive.
• 36% believe that they direct mail as “very useful” or “quite useful” in comparison to other forms of direct marketing
• 32% of business managers always open direct mail
• 30% report that they open all direct mail they receive if it looks relevant to them

What about response rates? Recent studies indicate that:

• 36% of business managers have responded to a direct mail campaign in the last month
• 22% of business managers have responded to a direct mail campaign in the last six months.
• 12% of the managers who responded to a direct mail campaign spent £200-£500 and 1% spent £5,000 to £10,000.

Call us today – let us know about the products and services you sell and your target audiences.

We’ll run a count for you letting you know how many decision makers we have on our database for you to connect with.

Our business to business mailing list

We hold the details of over 3,000,000 decision makers within businesses across the UK as part of our wider UK business database.

You don’t have to buy our entire business to business mailing list.

In fact, we’d prefer you didn’t because, without proper targeting, it’s going to be difficult for you to create the substantial returns which many companies enjoy from direct mail advertising.

Which businesses have the greatest need for your products and services?

Which business would save the most money, be able to become more efficient, or be able to access new opportunities with you by their side?

Share with us when you contact us the types of business you need to connect with. What do they do? Where are they based? How large  are their turnovers?

Who’s in charge in these companies for purchasing your products and services?

Let us know as much as possible and we’ll find the decision makers you need to get in touch with.

In addition to senior contacts within companies, we also have hundreds of thousands of records for decision makers with responsibility for engineering, facilities, finance, fleet, health and safety, HR, marketing, operations, sales, and telecoms purchasing.

By being extra selective about the companies you target, you save money on data, on postage, and on printing.

And the lower the cost of your direct mail campaigns, the higher your return on investment will be.

The UK’s most up-to-date and accurate business to business mailing list

In direct mail marketing, accuracy of the B2B database you use has a direct impact on the success of your campaign.

B2B data decays quickly. The latest survey shows that, within the course of a year:

• 43% of phone numbers change
• 37% of email addresses change
• 34% of people’s titles/roles change
• 30% of people change jobs
• 24% of companies change their names

Some marketers estimate that 70.3% of data becomes unusable on a business to business mailing list within 12 months.

Throughout the year of your licence to use our B2B mailing list, we guarantee the postal addresses on your database to a level of 98%.

If we don’t hit that target, we refund you pro-rata or we’ll issue you with replacement records.

How to order a bespoke business to business mailing list for your next postal marketing campaign

To order your B2B mailing list from More Than Words, please call us on 0330 010 8300 or contact our mailing lists team by clicking here.

Your database comes with 12 months’ usage licence and we provide it to you in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, or comma-separated value formats.

As part of our service, get our copywriters’ and designers’ feedback on the promotional material you intend to send to your target audience.

Normally within 24 hours, they’ll come back to you with their opinion on your material together with suggestions on how to achieve an even higher return.

You might also want to ask your account manager about our sales letter writing and brochure writing and design service.

Did you know that it’s often cheaper to run a 12 month managed B2B email campaign to your target audience than send one postal campaign? Ask your account manager to help you compare costs and response rates when you call.

Using your mailing list to generate the maximum return on your investment

Direct marketing can refer to both email and direct mail although today, in most cases, people will mean email marketing.

That’s because, in 2020, email is the most popular channel for sending marketing communications to other business.

However, marketers have recorded a resurgence in the volume of direct mail being sent which many attribute to the high response rates of postal marketing.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, marketing emails average an open rate of 20-30% however up to 90% of postal mail messages are opened.

Direct mail also has higher response rates with an average of 4.4% compared to email’s average of just 0.12%.

People often compare the two mediums simply because email is seen as a technological advance which has surpassed traditional direct mail.

But this is not the case.

Prospects engage differently with direct mail than they do with email.

Opening mail is often a specific portion of a decision maker’s working day and one without distractions.

In contrast, people tend to read emails on-the-go or in the middle of another activity and, as a result, they devote less attention to them.

Marketing experts agree that a multi-channel marketing approach is the most effective for any marketing campaign.

In general, B2B prospects must now receive around 6-8 marketing touches to convert into a sales lead.

With this in mind, a combination of direct mail and email marketing is guaranteed to perform better than focusing on just a single channel.

Segmenting a business to business mailing list

The best way to make the most money from postal marketing is to carefully select the decision makers who you contact fully understanding why each would have a need for your product or service.

First, choose which decision makers you target using the following classifications:

• Geographical location
• Industry
• Job title
• Business size/annual turnover

When you have your data, segment it down even further creating groups based upon the differing needs of businesses.

For example, if you offer debt collection services, you might want to segment the data into groups of…

• companies issuing lower number of invoices of higher values and
• companies issuing higher numbers of invoices of lower values

…to run separate campaigns to each detailing the specific benefits you deliver to each.

Creating an appealing direct mail message

You should never send any marketing message if you have nothing important to say.

For initial direct mail approaches you could consider:

• a general introduction to your business and its products and services,
• an invitation to an event you’re attending or hosting, or
• a special offer to encourage immediate sales.

As you are approaching businesses, a formal letter on a company letterhead will catch the attention of your recipient better than a flyer or obvious mass-messaging.

A general introduction to your business should include details of your products and services, information o how you’ve helped similar companies, and a reason to get in touch with you.

You might want to include a generic flyer when inviting recipients to attend an event but you should always make sure that you explain in a letter within the same envelope the advantages for coming along.

Many companies make special offers in direct mail campaigns to either sell older stock they want to shift or to provide services during traditionally quieter periods of the year.

Whichever type of letter you send, you should always include a call-to-action – a specific set of instructions detailing to the reader how you want them to respond to your campaign.

Buying business data lists from More Than Words

We’d appreciate the opportunity to get to know you, your company, what you sell and who you sell to.

We use all of our collective experience to make sure that the decision makers whose details we provide you with have a strong and provable need for your products and services.

Please call us, email us, or fill out the contact form and let us know what you want to achieve with the business to business mailing lists you purchase from us.

We’re open during office hours between Monday and Friday.

We’re available on 0330 010 8300 or you can email our marketing databases team by clicking here.

We’re based in North Shields town centre if you want to come and visit us. There is plenty of free parking outside and we’re only three minutes’ walk from North Shields Metro station.