Database Marketing - Money is in the List

You have probably heard the big marketing hotshots saying that money is in the list. They are right. It is much easier to sell a product to a customer who is already interested in what you are offering. If we follow the famous AIDA sales generation format, Attention - Interest - Desire - Action, we must take care only about desire and action if we use a database marketing list.

Database marketing is a method of promoting a product or service exclusively to a limited list of people. No voice broadcasts or cold calling, no newspaper adverts and almost no money spent on advertising. That is, if you have a database marketing list.

I advise that each company or individual offering products and services create and maintain a database of clients and potential clients. If you sell a product to a customer once, you simply cannot afford to lose this person from your sight.


This customer will make a part of your future goldmine.

The idea of database marketing is to collect data (name, e-mail, phone number and home address if lucky) of all people interested in your product AND to get their consent in you contacting them with more information. Without a consent you are risking to be labelled a spammer. There are different ways of generating contacts for your database marketing list. The easiest way is using online tools. If you are selling a product online, gather customer details via your usual order form, just have a tickable box to allow the customer to not consent to allow you sending sales material. Another easy way to gather prospective leads for your database marketing is to participate in fairs and exhibitions and to exchange databases with other relevant friendly businesses.

You will have several separate database marketing lists. It is not right to mix all the contacts in one list. Customers you have done business with, goes into the main list, prospective customers whose details you collect on fairs, exhibitions and other events should go into another list as this type of customers require a different approach.