Marketing and Sales Leads
Mailing Lists for Fundraising Businesses
Niche market mailing lists are a powerful way to take the next step and grow your business. But don't forget to work your leads into your sales strategy.
Everyone knows that fundraising business sales are all about relationships -- and good leads are the seeds for great relationships.
Sellers often fail to recognize that third-party lead lists frequently outperform lists that are generated by internal staff. Here's what you need to know about third-party fundraising business direct mail lists.
Lead Lists: Build or Buy?
Sales managers often question the value of lead lists based on the belief that their sales teams can generate the same leads in-house. However, they often overlook the fact that lead list providers are specialists who are highly skilled in identifying targeted leads. So a decent list provider can produce a list of prospective fundraising businesses more efficiently than in-house lead generation. Additionally, the best list providers have developed mechanisms that capture new fundraising businesses as they enter the marketplace and are religious about updating contact information. For the majority of in-house sales units, it's impossible to match the performance of third-party list providers.
Mailing List Vendor Summary
There is no shortage of vendors interested in selling fundraising business lead lists to your business. Unfortunately, most of those companies peddle stale lists that have been sold to hundreds of other clients and haven't been updated for months, if not years. When it comes to fundraising business lead lists, you get what you pay for. Reputable vendors charge fair rates, but they're still affordable and they provide a product that is vastly superior to the ones you get from discount vendors. At Gaebler, we refer our readers and clients to Experian for their business lead lists. In our experience, Experian is head and shoulders above most other providers. They have a broad range of fundraising business contacts that can be sorted to meet your precise sales criteria.
Lead List Dynamics
Lead lists can (and should) be filtered to target fundraising businesses that are likely to convert to satisfied customers. Filtered lists can then be used for a range of activities within your organization including prospecting, direct mail and telemarketing. If your marketing mix features Internet-based tactics, your lead lists should contain updated email and site contact data.
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