Finding your target audience isn’t quite the same thing as reaching them. But both are important for making your direct mail effective.

Finding your target audience has to do with figuring out who and where your customers are. Reaching them has to do with establishing the kind of person-to-person connection that makes people more likely to engage with your message and, hopefully, buy from you.

Know your customer, send targeted direct mail

The first step to both finding and reaching is getting to know your customer. Pay attention to who buys from you right now, looking for consistencies:

• What kinds of products do they buy most often?
• Do most of your customers fall within a certain age range?
• How about their income range?
• Do they shop from work or home?
• Where do they live or work?
• Do they pay with cash, checks or plastic?
• Is English their first or second language?
• What do they seem to value — thrift, status, convenience, luxury?

Once you have these observations, bundle them up and take them to a good mailing list broker. The broker can help you find your target audience — that is, come up with names and addresses of people who resemble your best customers.

Besides helping you find customers, your observations will provide insights into how your target market thinks and feels, so you can reach them with a message that is both relevant and motivating.