Looking to send out a direct mail campaign, for annuity leads...can anyone suggest the best places to find mailing lists to mail too? What demographics are best for the fixed/guarantee annuities?
There are plenty of companies that can supply mailing lists limited to particular demographics. You might start with InfoUSA to get an idea. At least they let you try different demographic searches to your city or zip codes to see what they come up with before buying anything.
For annuities, you generally want 55+, but it depends on whether you are going for retired people or soon to retire. 55+ gets both, 65+ limits it to more retired people.
You want to go for homeowners. In that demographic, you can set a minimum home value limit with most mail list companies. You can also look for income and/or net wealth. I don't like income because that is the easiest for people to fudge. Also, it can cut out well-to-to retirees who may show low income but have good investments. Different mailing list companies have different ways to determine wealth. You will have to feel that out.
I don't endorse InfoUSA especially, it is just a good starting point. I normally use turnkey systems that tend to have ways to focus more closely on what you want.
In order to maximize your mailing efforts you need to target your demographic area based upon information gathered from US Census data. This will allow you to find the zips, counties, locals that you are looking to drop mail.
Most lead generation companies will NOT do this for you. Basically, you say I want to drop these 3 zips, they say what age and income, take your CC# and away you go. This may work but it does not promise longevity in your campaign and is very primitive.
You need to pay particularly close attention to age...there is always an average age of retirement, and typically it will correlate to the average age of direct mail respondents...and be cautious with income, shooting for the stars will get you nowhere fast...institutional and accredited investors will NOT reply to your $0.40 postcard.
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SM4099 - thanks for posting, asking about this. I have been wondering myself an effective way to market annuities. Like Charpress said above, there are a good number of companies online that you can get data from.
One that I've used in the past was Salesgenie.com. I think they'll give you 100 free leads to try them out. That's obviously not enough for an effective marketing campaign, but you could use it as a testbed to see how your mailers work out.
Remember those weird Superbowl comercials they had a couple years ago?? ha!