![\"Ryan-George_sm\"](\"https:\/\/msaa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Ryan-George_sm-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>For years I\u2019ve preached that the most important mailing list for an auction company to use is their list of past bidders. But I\u2019ve been wrong\u2014at least partially.<\/p>\nThe line of thinking was that the most qualified prospects are those that are familiar with the auction process and have shown past interest in a specific asset category. Also, with Facebook\u2019s Lookalike Audience tool, you could leverage the email address column of this in-house list to find tens of thousands of similar people just like your bidders (in any geographic region). For one of my clients, that Lookalike Audience technique has led to a noticeable increase in his average quantity of registered bidders.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the problem, though: if you do enough auctions, that list is going to become unwieldy\u2014too large to efficiently send direct mail in the entirety. I\u2019ve worked for a handful of auction companies who regularly mail 6,000 to 10,000 pieces to in-house lists; and I\u2019ve consulted auction companies that mail tens of thousands of pieces per auction. I\u2019ve regularly been asked how to sort a proprietary list down to the best candidates.<\/p>\n
You can sort that by recent participation or number of auctions to which they\u2019ve registered. If you specialize in personal property, you could also sort by expenditure levels. The problem is that there\u2019s no way to tell\u2014outside of maybe the art\/collectibles or charity\/benefit markets\u2014if someone who bought something in the past wants to buy more of the same.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t know who the satiated buyers are on our lists. If a past bidder was searching for a specific asset at a specific time, there\u2019s a good chance they found what they wanted at the auction and\/or somewhere else between then and now. This is especially true of lists I\u2019ve seen auctioneers curate for a decade or more\u2014something they not only often do but also advertise as a selling point. Because of this high probability of satiated buyers, our in-house lists have only a slight advantage, if any, over a purchased mailing list or Facebook\u2019s Lookalike Audience tool.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one direct mail list I would trust more than both a purchased list and a generic \u201cpast bidders\u201d list. Other than time, it should cost nothing to capture. It\u2019s a list of possibly the most motivated and qualified candidates for your next auction of a similar asset.<\/p>\n
Your recent runner-up bidders.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever talked to an auction company that recorded that segment of their buyers. Online bidding platforms keep this information. These bidders shouldn\u2019t be too hard to discover at on-site auctions, either\u2014especially real estate ones. These folks are already in your clerking software. All it\u2019d take to pull this data is an extra column in your database to indicate that they came in second.<\/p>\n
This list will be relatively small in comparison to your whole list.<\/p>\n
Maybe these prospects get a bigger postcard or brochure, while everyone else gets a cheaper teaser piece. Or maybe they\u2019re the majority or entirety of your direct mail recipients, while everyone else gets emails and Lookalike Audience ads on Facebook (and now Instagram).<\/p>\n
Facebook just announced last week that it\u2019ll now be better able to match our mailing lists, as it opened up its tool to search by names and addresses\u2014not just email addresses and cell numbers. Theoretically, that means we will be able to build Lookalike Audiences from smaller lists than those it currently needs. So, small lists of backup bidders might now be large enough to have their own Lookalike Audiences.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a lot harder to unsubscribe from direct mail than email. So, even a list of people who\u2019ve signed up for your mailing list could no longer be as full of interested parties as you think. If those prospects aren\u2019t turning into bidders anyway, how much is that one-time indication of interest really worth?<\/p>\n
Past bidders are a better guess than the general public, but those that left with money and without an asset are even better.<\/p>\n
At the very least, it\u2019s worth A\/B testing your mailing lists to see which ones generate the most bidders and buyers. Best case scenario: this slice of your in-house database could free up a lot of marketing budget.<\/p>\n
![\"AuctionFlex_MAAeGavel_web1\"](\"https:\/\/msaa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/AuctionFlex_MAAeGavel_web1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winter eGavel 2015 Pg5 Welcome to the\u00a0MAA\u2019s Winter 2015 eGavel! eGavel Home, Page\u00a01,\u00a02,\u00a03,\u00a04,\u00a05,\u00a06,\u00a07,\u00a08 Download entire issue in\u00a0PDF HERE. The Most Important Mailing List\u00a0(That Auctioneers Aren\u2019t Using) by Ryan George For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3790,"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1563\/revisions\/3790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msaa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"eGavel](\"https:\/\/msaa.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/eGavel-logo-copy.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n