DIY Mailing Lists

As a small business, direct mail is a great way to reach your local customer base. The challenge many small business face, though, is finding a good mailing list—one that goes to real people, not empty homes. Alesco Leads is an online tool that lets you build high-quality mailing lists yourself. The best part is, you can also get your list when you need it—whether that’s 1:00 p.m. or 1:00 a.m. Our online system is available 24 hours a day. That’s good news for small business owners who usually do their marketing outside of regular business hours.

Choosing Your DIY Mailing Lists

We’ve got a variety of databases from which to build your list—consumer, business, new homeowners, resident/occupant, and more. All of these lists offer the additional ability to add specific demographic criteria to narrow the field, such as zip codes, gender, income, and more.

How to Build Your DIY Mailing List

Regardless of the database you choose, building your DIY mailing list is easy. As an example, we’ll take you through building a zip code mailing list. Often, we find our small business customers need to reach the people within the geography that will use their service. For example, a dry cleaner usually draws from a 5-mile radius, whereas a custom framing store may draw people from a larger area because the service is more specialized. For these customers, we suggest using our consumer database and starting with a zip-code search. With the Alesco Leads Consumer database, after you select your zip code(s), you can further refine that search based on other demographic criteria. Here is how you would build your list:

1. Go to Alesco Leads.
2. Choose the “Consumer” database.
3. From there, you’ll be able to select your geography. For a localized list, choose “Search within states by city, county, ZIP Code, Metro Area or Telephone Area Code” and click your state(s). Click continue.
4. On the next screen, choose “zip code” from the drop-down menu and click continue.
5. Next, you can choose your town, or choose a city, county, Metro area, or 3 Digit Zip. If, for example, your city, a list of all cities in the state comes up. Click on your city (or multiple cities) and then a list of zip codes will appear.
6. Choose the zip codes that cover your customer base. If you aren’t sure, this zip code boundaries map can help you out. Choose your zip codes and press continue.
7. Now you can refine your selections even more to target your list. With options such as gender, age, income, and more, you can choose as many variables as you’d like to narrow your list. Choose what you want, and another screen will appear to narrow it (such as which gender and what age). Make your choices and click continue.
8. You’re ready to place your order! The screen will tell you how many records met your criteria and what it costs. For example, if you get 2,000 records, but only want 975, you can choose the number you want to purchase. And you select whether you want to use the list once or multiple times. Press continue.
9. Choose the file format you want to receive the list in and press continue.
10. Finally, enter your payment information. Once done, you can download your list immediately and you are ready to go!

The whole process takes about 5 minutes. Building a list from any of our DIY mailing list databases is just as easy and fast. And if you aren’t sure which database is best, compile a few lists from our different databases and see which offers you the choices that are the best fit with your needs.

What you do with your new list is up to you—announce a special event, offer a great deal, or make a big announcement. Whatever kind of direct mail you’re sending, with a DIY mailing list, you can rest assured it will reach your customers.

If you have questions about ordering lists online, click here. As always, our list brokers are available to help you if you need further assistance.