Address marketing is used in connection with advertising material sent by post. Address marketing describes those postal marketing measures that are carried out with individually addressed advertising material. Address marketing must therefore be clearly distinguished from direct mail and unaddressed flyers.
Address marketing for customer loyalty can be carried out with an existing customer base. In order to acquire new customers, new addresses usually have to be purchased from the relevant providers.
Why buy addresses?
In order to attract new customers with address marketing, new addresses are required. These addresses should correspond to your own target group. In order to find a suitable provider, the target group must first be narrowed down as precisely as possible. Selection criteria can be, for example, the region or the size of the company.
You cannot always find a suitable provider for all selection criteria. In any case, it is worthwhile to compare the prices before buying if you have several providers with similar criteria to choose from.
Difference between company addresses and private addresses
Since the GDPR at the latest, buying and selling private addresses has been very tricky from a legal point of view. Previously, address dealers and thus also their customers could invoke the list privilege set out in the Federal Data Protection Act at the time. This no longer applies in the new Federal Data Protection Act and the GDPR.
But company addresses can also be protected by the GDPR if they are not legal persons. This even affects the majority of all companies across Germany. Doctors, craftsmen and the self-employed, for example, are usually not considered to be legal persons.
Which address providers are there?
There are address providers on the market with a wide variety of specializations. There are still address providers who sell not only company addresses but also private addresses. Address providers such as Address-Base, on the other hand, have specialized in company addresses.
However, there are also different specialization options in the area of company addresses. For example, some providers can provide information about the IT infrastructure, the vehicle fleet or special contact persons. Such information is usually noticeably reflected in the purchase price.
Sense of address buying
In order to win new customers by post, many addresses of potential new customers are required. Since response rates are often only in the per mille range and even with very good promotions only in the low, single-digit percentage range, many recipients have to be written to in order to feel an effect.
Generating so many addresses independently is a very time-consuming and costly undertaking. Address dealers can offer large quantities of addresses at much more economical conditions than generating their own addresses.
Advantages of address marketing
Compared to direct mail and unaddressed flyers, individually addressed letters receive more attention from the recipient. In addition, the target groups can usually be more precisely coordinated.
Postal address marketing is the only legal method of gaining new customers with specified recipients. Since you have never had contact with the recipient when acquiring new customers, no advertising consent can be given. This is required for advertising by e-mail, fax, SMS or telephone according to the law against unfair competition, both for private individuals and companies.
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