It all used to be so easy – if you wanted to do a direct marketing B2B campaign you just bought a postal mailing list of the relevant companies, and mailed them.

All the mailing lists existed (and indeed still exist) for all the types of companies and organisations you can think of, from abattoirs to zoos, from banks to charities. (If you are interested in postal addresses, just skip to the end of this email for the link to our list of lists).

But today there is a need for email campaigns as well – and indeed I think we get more B2B enquiries for email lists of people in specific types of companies than anything else.

And by and large those who call us are disappointed. What they want is a dead simple solution – they say, “can I have the email addresses of practice managers in GP surgeries?” or whatever, and we have to say, “not immediately – we can get them for you, but we don’t have them just now”.

The fact is that all these email addresses can be obtained – but to get a decent list one has to research the list. The research is done in many ways – by telephoning, by checking web sites, by writing to the individual and offering something low cost or free that has to be applied for by email…

But because the list is not available now, the matter fades away, and nothing is done.

However this difficulty is also a real bonus for those companies that look beyond the requirement of an immediate mailing list. For the fact is that the lack of immediately available email lists of quality in certain areas means that you can be fairly sure that most of your competitors are not involved in this sort of marketing.

It is also the case that this type of research to generate such a list can be done on a step by step basis. You can, for example, ask a research company like Hamilton House to do the research on (say) 200 companies. Then you experiment with a few emails to these companies, and see what the results are. At the very worst, you have got yourself a couple of hundred useful email addresses. At best, you will find these emails can be used to generate a huge level of new income for very little subsequent cost.

If you are interested in email marketing to businesses, please do call 01536 399 000 and we’ll be happy to talk it through. No obligation of course. If you are interested in buying postal addresses in order to do your own research we can help with those too – and there is an index of our lists at http://www.hamilton-house.com/gateways/business.html

Tony Attwood
Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB. Phone 01536 399 000.