Demographics denote the hard statistics like age, income, geographical details etc. Psychographics essentially denotes a person’s interest, attitudes and opinions. Technographics is a new term, an approach of consumer analysis categorizing the behavioral usage and ownership of information, communication & entertainment technologies. This segmentation approach is more of a focused category of the psychographics which is becoming increasingly important to marketers.

You need to gather or purchase direct mailing lists with the capability to drill down to not only the demographics but also psychographics which are namely life style and life stage behavioral needs. Better still, if the lists include data information on technographics.

Mapping your demographic Direct Marketing listing with psychographic as well as techno-graphic characteristics give much greater accuracy and hence effectiveness.

In fact, marketers will have very distorted perspectives of their Direct Marketing subjects otherwise.

Let us explore this with an illustration:

What would you have sold to your prospect simply with the information that your subject is limited to - Age 50, income group US$200,000 per annum?

And what would you have sold him if you had also known that this person is enjoying an early retirement with a $200,000 per annum investment income, lives in downtown Manhattan, is a digital products fanatic, frequents 5-star Italian restaurants, travels 4 times a year, is a philanthropist, plays golf weekly, and does Pilates twice a week with his 2nd wife (who is 20 years younger)

Indeed, Food for thought for serious direct marketers…