What is InfoUSA?

InfoUSA is primarily a mailing list provider and sales prospecting service that offers several other features to clients as well. InfoUSA can prove to be a very useful business research tool to help target the right leads. Some of the major services that InfoUSA provides are:

• Mailing Lists
• Direct Mail Marketing
• Ad Campaigns
• Salesgenie - A sales leads and prospecting tool
  

Here’s a breakdown of the different features that infoUSA provides:

Mailing Lists

InfoUSA is essentially a ‘list broker’ that provides agencies and businesses the information and records of people who they can target to market their products. Their comprehensive and up-to-date database can help market a business' product to the right demographic, attracting more leads to aid the growth of the business.

Direct Mail Marketing:

InfoUSA does not stick to providing their clients with email lists/online services. They also have an extensive database of physical addresses and other such information of potential leads, so that it’s easy for a business to market their product through the conventional postal service, if they prefer it that way. A huge number of businesses can benefit greatly by using physical admail, especially if they're local businesses that want to let the city know about something new that's brewing.

Ad Campaigns:

In addition to providing mailing lists and services, InfoUSA also helps its clients market themselves better online. InfoUSA has a Google Ad Preview tool that helps visualize how their ads will appear on Google’s SERP. InfoUSA also takes care of setting up clients’ Google AdWords and Yahoo! Bing Network ad campaigns, along with advertising on websites that targets visit often.

Salesgenie:

Salesgenie is, in all truth, not actually one of the services that InfoUSA provides. Salesgenie is a full-fledged company by itself, but InfoUSA and Salesgenie have the same parent company - Infogroup. Salesgenie can be considered a sister company to InfoUSA, and could be useful for anybody who uses InfoUSA’s services.

Salesgenie is a sales leads and prospecting tool that essentially provides the same service that InfoUSA does. Salesgenie specializes in providing the data of key people in a business/firm/industry to firms, thereby helping businesses reach the right people to talk to and sell better.

InfoUSA and Salesgenie Pricing:

You can sign up for a free trial of Salesgenie (cost-free for 3 days) with 150 free leads – no credit card required, to see how it works for yourself!

And if you're wondering what the pros and cons of using InfoUSA are:

The Positives:

1. Direct Mail Isn't Dead - InfoUSA understands that some businesses prefer to send a brochure/coupon/newsletter the old fashioned way - through postal services. InfoUSA, unlike several mailing list/email marketing providers, still has the option to help you send physical mail to people.
2. Designing? Piece of Cake - InfoUSA provides with several themes and templates that makes it extremely simple for users to create custom emails that will grab anyone's attention.‍
3. Always Up-to-Date - InfoUSA makes sure that it keeps track of changes in the details of people in their database; for example, if someone's moved from one location to another recently, InfoUSA makes sure that the details of the user are updated to show the address as the new location.
   

The Not-So-Positives:

1. How Much Does This Cost? - InfoUSA does not have its pricing structure laid out transparently, anywhere. There is always a veil of suspense as to how much the service really costs/what are the factors that contribute to every personal invoice.‍
2. Tracker, Tracker, Where Are You? - There is no way to keep track of the snail mail that is being sent to leads. Unlike the other postal services out there, InfoUSA does not have a tracking tool that tells you logistics regarding where the mail is right now, whether it was delivered, and so on and so forth.

When Do You Need InfoUSA?

If you are looking to expand your customer base/market to more people through mail, and are in need of filtering and targeting the right audience who are most likely to buy your product, then InfoUSA is a great option for you. InfoUSA and Salesgenie allow you to find the right kind of customers by segmenting the users in their database based on age, occupation, credit rating, or employee size/sales volume for businesses, alongside many such categories. This helps you obtain a mailing list that will target the right demographic, thereby increasing the chances of you marketing your product and generating leads effectively.

So, is InfoUSA Worth It?

InfoUSA and Salesgenie are widely regarded as one of the best tools to obtain tailor-made mailing lists and for email marketing. However, the service might be a little too expensive for businesses that are just starting out and can't shell out a significantly high budget for online marketing alone. Salesgenie has a high rating of 9.7/10 on ResellerRatings.com and has largely positive reviews. (via: http://www.sales-leads.com/lead-companies/)

How Can I Market My Business Better Online?

Email marketing is just one of the many ways through which one can market a business online. There are several other strategies that one can adopt to make sure a business’ online presence fetches it more customers, ranging from a site's SEO to paid advertising.

Amongst these, listing management is a must-have for businesses, especially ones that are starting out, so that people searching for a business like yours nearby/in a directory find your business and call you before they call your competitors

Not sure whether your the lack of your listings online is making you lose out on customers? Run a free scan on Synup’s business listing scan tool right now to know!

Did you like our review of InfoUSA? Check out other ways to market your business on our review of Manta here!