Hunting for Prospects

IF YOU ARE HUNTING FOR A FRESH PROSPECT LIST, you might want to take a look at the selections available on hunting and shooting lists this fall. This audience is often overlooked by marketers focused on holiday gift buyers this time of year, or by those who don't believe that hunters and shooters have an affinity for their offers. Many of these buyers can be selected based on product purchase categories such as apparel, shoes, camping equipment, cutlery, motorsports and more. Bird hunters are often dog lovers because they rely on man's best friend to stir up and often retrieve their prey. Hunters love being outdoors and are willing to get up hours before dawn to fulfill their passion.

There are more than 2,522 rate cards categorized with hunting data in the NextMark index, many of which are targeted lists of buyers and subscribers. If you can get creative and find the right correlation, it's definitely an audience to test. For example, a couple of highly correlated lists are representative of cigar smokers. Another option might be to consider testing gun owners for a political campaign.

Timing is important. Many hunting seasons are extended into the winter months nowadays for special seasons like muzzleloader and winter bow hunting, probably intended to thin out the deer herd in the overpopulated state of New Jersey. In a nutshell, the offline data here is very rich — so take advantage of it where applicable.

The total universe, base price, list popularity index (LPI), and list manager contact information is provided for each of the five life event databases below. The LPI shows each list's rating on a range from 0 to 100, with 100 being the highest. The scores are calculated using an algorithm that analyzes recency and frequency of more than 100,000 outside list recommendations made in the trailing 12 months of the scoring date.

Cabela's

Universe: 5,746,045

Price: $95/M

List Popularity Index: 100

Contact: William-Neil Associates, Beanie Obermier, [email protected], (308) 255-1659

Cheaper Than Dirt

Universe: 378,916

Price: $100/M

List Popularity Index: 100

Contact: List Locators & Managers, Brad Alexander, [email protected], (913) 338-5055

Guns and Ammo Magazine

Universe: 297,075

Price: $105/M

List Popularity Index: 99

Contact: Chilcutt Direct Marketing, Jane McCoy, [email protected], (405) 478-7245

North American Hunting Club

Universe: 806,261

Price: $105/M

List Popularity Index: 100

Contact: Specialists Marketing Services, Linda Ebenhack, [email protected], (201) 865-5800

Sportsman's Guide Hunting & Shooting

Universe: 1,211,002

Price: $100/M

List Popularity Index: 100

Contact: American List Counsel, Bruce Kimmel, [email protected], (914) 524-5249

Data cards for these are publicly available at http://lists.nextmark.com.

Chris DeMartine ([email protected]) is director of business development for NextMark.