TA's TelecomAgent News - Publications

Direct Mail List of Prospective Agents 
back to Publications Home  back to TelecomAgent News Home

TA has compiled the following list of 17,756 prospective telecom agents from various subscription based list providers including InfoUSA, GoLeads & TrueAdvantage.  TA vendor members can have TA send any direct mail piece they desire to any subset of the list.  TA vendors will also receive a telemarketing list to use to follow up on any list subset they mail to.  If you are a current TA vendor member, contact Kathleen Brown at 951-296-3870 or KB@TelecomAssociation.com to use this list.

Breakdown by SIC Code 

Breakdown by State

Direct Mail Charges

TA uses the direct mail services of the US Postal Service which you can review at http://mol.usps.com.  Please log into the USPS site, create a free account for yourself and see what's possible to do.  Below are sample prices that include postage & production.

In addition, TA charges $25 per hour to process your job.  If you need artwork created, we can put you in touch with people we work with that can produce nice print pieces that are ready to upload to the USPS site. 

Please note that if you are creating your own direct mail pieces please review the specifications information by clicking here. If you are going to send a postcard please start with a template that you can download from the USPS site by clicking here. 

Direct Mail Production Time

All direct mail jobs must be completely prepaid; prepayment should be discussed with Kathleen Brown (951-296-3870).  The best way to prepay is to send a deposit that will more than cover what you want to mail.  If you need art the turn around on that can be from a couple days to a week. 

After your prepaid mailing funds are processed, the art is uploaded and accepted and we press the "mail now button", the direct mail pieces will be in the recipient's US postal mailbox within 3 to 5 business days.  The best way to get a good feel for timing is to produce several small 100 piece mailings with recipients from around the country to gauge just how long any different kind of job takes.

Success Rate, Guarantee & The Five Direct Mail (DM) Success Secrets

If you try several different direct mail pieces with different calls to action to different small sample audiences, you'll quickly get the hang of what messages work with which audiences. I f you do many small trials, then you'll know what works and you will be successful with larger mailings.  If you just do one huge mailing with an untested message on an untested direct mail piece, you're more likely to be disappointed with the results.  At TA, the only thing we guarantee is that the more your practice the better you'll get and the happier you'll be. Practice Makes Perfect!

DM success secret number one is the "irresistible statement & simple call to action". The irresistible statement should appeal to the recipient's basic needs  of avoiding loss or gaining profit.  A sample irresistible statement might be "What Google doesn't want VoIP agents to know" or "The three ways your VoIP competition will crush you this year".  The simple call to action is simply the posting of a telephone number or a custom web address like this, "Get the free report by calling 888-73Crush or visit www.GoogleHatesVoIP.com. 

DM success secret number two is "learn to effectively filter".  Anyone with an unlimited marketing budget can personally contact every list prospect to see if they want to buy their stuff.  The rest of us though must learn to effectively filter or sift through our lists so as to get more money coming in through new sales before the whole marketing budget is spent.  How to do this?  Refine your irresistible call to action until the proper prospects are responding. "Call 888-624-Cash to get a $100 bill" will get you a high response rate but you'll burn through your whole budget quickly and still be stuck with having to filter through the tire-kickers to find your high-margin prospects.  What specific call to action maximizes response from the prospect you most highly desire?

DM success secret number three is to "just get started already".  When you can send a DM piece to just a couple hundred prospects for less than a couple hundred bucks to start measuring what works, those that sit around and think about what they should be saying are going to get buried by those who are just moving ahead with something to figure out what works.

The fourth DM success secret is "don't forget the phone".  One of the best reasons to DM in small batches is so you can call each DM recipient about the same time they get your DM piece.  The phone significantly increases what you learn about the effectiveness of what you're doing.  It's also pretty impressive for the recipient.  While they get bombarded with DM every week, few DMers seem serious enough about their targets to invest in a phone call.

The last DM success secret is to "never pay for a lead twice".  A list of 17,000 DM prospects is not a lead list . The idea behind sending DM to any of the 17,000 is to see which one of them wants to be a lead for your product or service.  Everyone on the list of 17,000 needs to be sorted into one of three buckets, the buy now, buy later, or buy never bucket.  The mistake many DMers make is they send a DM off, collect their sales and have nothing more to show for their money. Make sure that everyone that responds in any way gets taken off your big list.  Responders that turn into customers obviously need to go on your customer newsletter.  "Might buy later" responders need to go on a different follow-up list.  "Let's not ever spend a stamp on these folks again" responders need to be economically purged from all current & future lists. 

TA's TelecomAgent News - Publications

Direct Mail List of Prospective Agents   back to Publications Home  back to TelecomAgent News Home