How do you all find direct mail or email lists?

[Ashley Gable]

I know this is more of an internet marketing forum, but for those of you who market offline as well, how do you go about finding your ideal customers?

I want to market to teens, or i guess i should say younger people looking for a low start up summer business. Its not like it is a certain area or specific trait ie surfers, small business owners etc.

So how would one find or "buy" a list in the upper hundreds. Like 1000 or so.

Is there a special recourse i am missing?

Thanks

p.s. also email is fine too, but again cant find any that market to teens or students, both college and high school

p.s.s. anyone here ever market to teen or students? curious to know how it went. I think it may be harder as most high schoolers dont have credit cards (i think?)

Thanks

[petevamp]

Originally Posted by AshleyAA

I know this is more of an internet marketing forum, but for those of you who market offline as well, how do you go about finding your ideal customers?

I want to market to teens, or i guess i should say younger people looking for a low start up summer business. Its not like it is a certain area or specific trait ie surfers, small business owners etc.

So how would one find or "buy" a list in the upper hundreds. Like 1000 or so.

Is there a special recourse i am missing?

Thanks

p.s. also email is fine too, but again cant find any that market to teens or students, both college and high school

p.s.s. anyone here ever market to teen or students? curious to know how it went. I think it may be harder as most high schoolers dont have credit cards (i think?)

Thanks

Hey bud internet marketing is off line marketing. How I would do as you are saying. If Your niche is say about Ipods the next time you are at say a walmart store take a trip to the electronics section. If you see someone looking at the ipods or the iphones which should also be part of your targeting method. Simply start a conversation with them then by the end of the conversation say something like this " Before I bought mine I visited so and so site which helped me a alot on my decission on my purchase. They have such and such subscribe to there newsletter for more a constant steam of free info.

Thats how I would go about it my self. You can also make business cards and just hand them out most hot dog places have a spot for you to place your own business cards. Any one interested will grab one for the information you might have on the subject.

[Loren Woirhaye]

You can certainly try ezine advertising to ezine which target
the group you want. Joint-venturing with list owners could
be profitable as well - and cost you nothing to test, provided
you have your own unique product to offer.

For direct mail you can rent from a list broker.

[petevamp]

another thing to consider if you are trying to target teens you need to know what they are searching for. If you can see what they are searching for you will have a good chance to target them. Young teens also do not use search engines for alot of there searches in my honest oppion they do search you tube so you should start your marking there with a minimum of 10 videos on your niche addressing what the teens are going to be looking for. jmho

[Ashley Gable]

Great thanks for the replies.

Loren where do you find joint ventures and list brokers? List brokers are more of what i want, but a joint venture isnt out of the question, so where do most people go to find a suitable partner? Should i just ask other sites that would probably have my target audience?

And pete i think youtube is great and will implement what you said, however wouldnt that be considered "traffic generation"?

I am looking for a list of "Fresh" leads. I want to test out some direct mail stuff i learned and am looking for list of mailing addresses to teens and students, but dont want to build it myself.

Thanks again for the help

[internetwarrior97]

My recommendation would be to find an area you'd like to target (some regions have more people of a certain age range than others) and find a YMCA or some sort of young-adult targeted programs. You can talk to that organization first to see if you can distribute free material to their customers, or, you can set up a joint venture with them.

[Terry Hatfield]

Hi,

For list brokers just google "list brokers" or look in your phone book. Also your librarian can help you find them they have a bunch of resource books.

Also, check out standard rate and data service at srds.com , they all the list you could ever want.

[Marcus Paul]

The most reputable one I've found is this:

NextMark - Buy Mailing Lists, Sell Mailing Lists, Learn About Mailing Lists

Make sure you understand how you want your list filtered before you buy.