The major list providers have long been providing their largest customers with sophisticated selection tools, including geographic tools. Even some of the biggest list resellers rely heavily on being able to target lists by radius. Some of these tools group addresses into carrier route centroids (the center point of a carrier route area) when making a selection but in the past few years, some have introduced systems that select by individual address locations for increased accuracy. While such capabilities have been important breakthroughs for the entire list industry’s reputation for more precise targeting, radius selects fail to account for a wide variety of local marketing programs. For example, what if a 3 mile radius brings in addresses from across a river where the nearest bridge is 5 miles away?

Several list providers rely on outsourcing such unique targeting cases to mapping service bureaus. This is an excellent approach for small to mid-sized marketing service firms who call the mapping partner on an as-needed basis.

Larger firms are starting to incorporate online mapping systems that tie into their list ordering presence. This gives them a competitive advantage and reduces operating expenses. Instead of having to compete on price, the list providers now compete on capabilities. By allowing customers to select their own carrier routes for ordering list data, the broker is freed up to focus on what they do best (this is especially important for low-volume customers).

The user (your customer) experiences the system as such: They visit your web site in the hopes of ordering some address lists. Your existing system may allow them to choose list type as well as rough geography such as county or ZIP Code or maybe even radius. But now they also have the option of choosing by map selection. A map window pops up showing their county and the ZIP codes and highways. They can then zoom in to begin to see local roads and carrier routes around their site. From right within the map, they click on the carrier routes (which they think of as neighborhoods), thereby choosing the areas that they think will respond best to their offer. That list of carrier route codes passes back to your list selection database and the appropriate data is ordered.

The benefits to such a system are:

reduced broker time – customer self-selects (especially important for low volume customers)
better response – the better the list they get from you, the more likely they will view you as a valuable part of their marketing
reduced overall costs – this saves your customer on total marketing costs (even after paying your fees) and so you don’t have to drop your prices and instead compete on total value
more options – this gives customers more options beyond radius or entire ZIP Codes and that gives you a competitive advantage
market share domination – as with all new technology, early adopters are going to get the largest market share as the customers who value mapping tend to stick with their original provider
flexibility – such systems can take a low-tech or high-tech approach to mapping (non-integrated or integrated) and list providers can turn features on or off depending on the customer’s access rights

If you are looking to provide interactive mapping for list targeting, the good news is that there are several affordable options to choose from. You’ll need to develop separate budgets for each of the following:

map engine licensing – the map engine is the core technology that draws the map and upon which the interface is built
map data – deciding what you want to show in the map is important because you’ll need commercial databases for carrier routes and ZIP Codes along with streets, highways, and counties
hosting – whether you host the map application on your server or ask your mapping service bureau to seamlessly host those subroutines for you, the price and performance are important to the viability of your project
programming/application development – very few programmers have the specific experience to integrate mapping so you’ll either have to outsource this or plan on significant re-training of existing staff

If you are looking to enlist a mapping service bureau, you may want to start out by first using them on an as-needed basis so that you learn more about their capabilities and they learn more about your needs. Then you can contract with them to develop an application that fits your specifications and your budget. Some of the important criteria you should factor into your choice of a mapping vendor are:

Are they dedicated to mapping services or is mapping a small part of their total offering? You want a partner focused on mapping so they aren’t competing with you.
Proven experience with postal geography down to the carrier route level, including a deep understanding of how these postal concepts are defined
Availability of a wide range of tools and options rather than being locked into a single vendor’s solution
Emphasis on direct marketing
Eagerness to work with you to come up with the best solution if a “standard” service needs to be modified
Range of related services that could complement your online mapping presence

Printed in the May 2003 edition of DMNews.