Direct Mail Efforts & List Source

[Taylor Witt]

BP - My reasons behind writing this post are to track my own progress, get other peoples best practices, and give updates along the way so we can all learn.

I am doing my first direct mail campaign focused on self storage facilities in Minnesota.  I purchased a list from List Source which I was initially excited about and really enthused to get my postcards out the door!  But after digging into the data that was provided, I noticed that only half the County's I was looking to mail to showed up on their list.  I was going to miss half my audience of who I thought I was mailing to!  I called List Source to investigate further, they looked into it, and a day later a gentleman called and said that some County's don't provide their information.  Then I looked into the data further, and about 5% of the addresses I received were actually addresses to self storage facilities.  I'm not sure why this information was provided or in the criteria, because I spoke with 2 different customer support reps and said I should have the correct information while creating my lists.

So I decided to buckle down and create my own lists.  I found the markets that I wanted to be in and I ran Google searches and cross referenced with Map Quest to verify I was getting all the facilities.  I then checked the all the County's in which these facilities are located to find the owner and mailing address.  I have 400 or so remaining data points to enter before sending my first mailer out.  I will be doing 3 separate postcards, 1 each month, and be following these up with phone calls.

What have others done to be successful in their marketing efforts?  What other options do I have other than List Source, or should I just continue to build my own database?  How often are you sending mailers and changing your letter/postcard you are sending?

I will keep everyone updated as I go with results.