We would've tried to down-sell and cross-sell to all the unconverted leads, offering additional products or services that were semi-related mailing list to what we were trying to sell them. There's so much you can do -- but most people are just giving up on their prospects too soon. The ROI is always the bottom line. Once you total up all the costs of a mailing or program, do you have a profit left over?
There might be dozens of things you'll have to take into account, but when you know your exact expenses and the response mailing list you get from your mailings, you can easily determine the ROI -- whether you sent out 1,000 or 100,000 mailings. Now, mailing lists are crucial here. We know the best lists are our own customers, and I'll talk about that in more detail later on; but first I want to talk about the costs of buying mailing lists.
Good list companies charge from $100-150 per thousand for good response lists. Those are people who've spent money for certain mailing list types of products or services. If you have a similar service or product, that's one of the best lists you can get. There are other list companies that charge as little as $20-30 per thousand for lists that they claim offer good response.