Building a Prospect List

Who is a good prospect?  

• Past members who are not currently involved
• Colleagues who work in the records management profession
• Someone who has attended an event in the past
• Those in similar organizations who rely on resources for managing information (think legal, IT, and RIM professionals)
• Those who perform a records and information management function for smaller organizations but without a formally recognized “RIM” title

Email, Phones & Fax – the Current Landscape

In order to communicate with your prospects, you must be in front of them in as many ways as possible. Best practices in marketing would show that a combined messaging approach (both physical and email pieces) captures member and prospective member attention better than one method alone. We respond differently to physical mail than electronic mail.

There's also a point to be made here about physical addresses changing less frequently than email addresses. We have to assume, however, that an adequate email marketing system has safeguards for hard or soft email bounces – what happens when a message is undeliverable… are they scrubbed from the list, or followed up on to get accurate information?

So it sounds like we need to send physical and electronic messages to our prospects to keep them informed of our events and to ultimately have them join the chapter. BUT WAIT… That's not quite all of the story.

You must have a prior business relationship with a prospect in order to send them email. Beyond that, you must maintain an accurate system for allowing prospects to manage their profiles to opt out of all or certain types of messages. Messages sent to a prospect after they have opted out put the organization in legal liability for each message sent. Some of the best prospects often have no prior business relationship – but we must find a way to contact them. That is the other reason why physical addresses are so critical.

Phone messages and Fax messages follow similar rules. Having a prior business relationship is the key, but be sure you also have an accurate database system that will allow you to note their preferences and allow someone to opt out from any given form of communication.