Niche Mailing Lists

Mailing Lists for Pet Stores

It's a given that you need ingenuity and boldness to win. In addition, top sales teams know that a good lead list is the key that can allow you to tailor your marketing campaigns with surgical precision when selling to pet stores.

Persistence pays off in the form of sales conversions. Sales organizations that are proactive about acquiring fresh pet store prospects have a clear advantage relative to businesses that wait for customers to establish first contact.

There are only so many pet stores you can sell to. You can't sell to all of them, but lead lists increase awareness so you can spend more time with prospects that are most likely to convert.

Lead Lists: Build or Buy?

Business owners often avoid lead lists because they feel they can produce the same results using in-house resources. But what they fail to consider is that lead list providers are specialists who are extremely adept at identifying targeted leads. So a decent list provider can produce a list of prospective pet stores at a cost that is much lower than in-house lead generation. Even more, world-class lead list vendors have developed mechanisms that capture new pet stores as they enter the marketplace and meticulously maintain their contact databases. For most in-house sales units, it's impossible to match the performance of third-party list providers.

Use Your Lead Lists for Both Marketing and Sales

If you limit the use of pet store lead lists to direct mail and cold calling, you're handicapping the return on your investment. A good lead list can serve as a collaborative resource for sales, marketing and other business divisions. For example, after you have acquired a lead list that has been filtered by area code, your marketing division could test a handful of marketing concepts in each area. If the marketing division's efforts are coordinated with the sales division, you could then determine which marketing concepts have the highest conversion rates in each area before launching a full-scale, one-size-fits-all campaign.

Where to Find Lead Lists

Online searches are usually the first place sales managers go when they're looking for a lead list provider. The Internet has obvious value, but it doesn't tell the whole story. You'll find no shortage of vendors that are big on promises and short on execution, so it's important to verify each provider's claims and references.

We've known many lead list providers throughout the years, but we have been consistently impressed with Experian. One of the reasons we like Experian is because they have a database of more than 14 million U.S. businesses. Companies that sell to pet stores routinely depend on Experian to deliver updated leads that have been filtered to meet precise geographic and demographic criteria.

Share this article


Additional Resources for Entrepreneurs

Lists of Venture Capital and Private Equity Firms

Franchise Opportunities

Contributors

Business Glossary