Never discouraged by futility or resistance, I continue to teach and preach the profound advantage available only through precise message to market match. And I have another instructive example.

The big sporting goods, hunting, fishing, camping and apparel company ORVIS offers its customer mailing list with ethnic and religious selects, so you can obtain only the Jewish or Catholic or Muslim or Hindu buyers, or only the Asian or African-American or British or Irish or Italian or Hispanic buyers….and by merging Orvis’ list with InfoUSA lifestyle selects, you can get only Democrats or only Republicans…so you could, for example, get only Irish-Catholic Democrats, by age, gender and geography.

Why on earth would you want to do such a thing? Why on earth would they let a piece go out like that?

You wouldn’t, unless you were going to customize your sales letter and enclosures, envelope, offer, everything specifically and precisely for the selected list.

As example, let us assume we are going to offer an Alaska cruise with stops for bear hunting and salmon fishing and the like to Orvis’ married multi-buyers of hunting and fishing gear and apparel who have bought items priced above $200.00.

To the Irish-Catholic Democrats, we might put a picture of John F. Kennedy on the outside of the envelope with a quotation about the beauty and wonder of the great outdoors but to the Republicans we might put a picture of Ronald Reagan on horseback with his similar quotations.

This is a bit of work, two different envelopes, find the photos, find the quotes. But for maximum leverage, we would carry this customization all the way through to the nth degree, in minute detail.

Testimonials should have Irish surnames.

The Democrats would get Al Gore, “green”, environmentalist language; the Republicans would get ??? what? I’m not sure….eat the polar bears….language.

The point is, were I going to sell something to Orvis’ customers, I would slice ‘n dice this list every which way I could, down to multi-selected micros-cosms and I would create entirely customized messages and mailing packages for each little sub-list.

With Hispanics and Asians, I’d do bi-lingual mailings (there’s abundant evidence it bumps response considerably).

LAZY, LAZY, LAZY MARKETERS often find themselves unable to profitably use direct-mail and rented lists SOLELY because they refuse to engage in this admittedly complex work, thus depriving themselves of the most sustainable,leveragable marketing advantage.

About the Author: Dan Kennedy is internationally recognized as the ‘Millionaire Maker,’ helping people in just about every category of business turn their ideas into fortunes. Dan’s “No B.S.” approach is refreshing amidst a world of small business marketing hype and enriches those who act on his advice. Dan is also author of seven popular No B.S. books, thirteen business books total; a serial, successful, multi-millionaire entrepreneur. https://www.dankennedy.com