We met with a client recently that manufactures and sells a line of chemical and gas detection equipment. They belong to a category of companies whose target audience is neither horizontal (decision-makers can be anyone from safety engineers to plant managers to industrial hygienists) nor vertical (customers range from the federal government to mining companies to fire departments).

Since there's no "Gas Detection Monthly" or similar publication on the market, the client advertises and promotes their product line through a range of trade magazines and associated mailing lists. Predictably, since only a small subset of the readership of those publications has an interest in gas detection, response rates and ROI are poor.

Our recommendation was to embark on a strategy whereby the client would build their own list, over time, of individuals with an ongoing interest in news, trends, regulations, and technology related to chemical and gas detection. The company already published a quarterly newsletter (in PDF format), but did little to promote it (it wasn't even mentioned on their home page).

The strategy centered on promoting the newsletter heavily in ads, direct mail, and online advertising. We also recommended converting the publication to an HTML format to eliminate the need for a large attachment and therefore increase open, response, and pass-along rates. (A large part of the value of e-mail newsletters is their "viral" nature and their ability to penetrate key accounts and attract potential prospects that may not be accessible through third-party lists.)

Experience with other clients tells us that using an e-mail newsletter as the primary offer in such a campaign can increase response substantially, because it attracts not only those potential customers with an immediate need, but also more long term prospects with an ongoing interest in your product or service. It can also serve to dramatically reduce media costs by eliminating the need to constantly re-rent new names from third party sources.