Sponsored Content WEBINAR: ELECTION 2008: E-mail Tips from a Political Insider   WEBINAR: Becoming the Illusionist: The Magic of Using "Brand" to Drive Response without Results Disappearing in the Process   WEBINAR: Score and Win Through Cooperation   TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Holiday's are prime-time for email marketing - maximize your ROI by getting to the inbox   ON DEMAND WEBINAR--MASTER CLASS: High Performance Online and Off-line Strategies for Large Scale Customer Acquisition   FREE WHITE PAPER - Direct Mail and the Internet Find any supplier you need - agencies, CRM, fulfillment, lists, e-commerce, paper, printers, telemarketing, and more. Featured Categories Lists and Data Telemarketing Database Marketing E-commerce Web Marketing Agency & Creative Services Print, Production & Paper Lists and Data Processing :: view all categories Get free access to more than 50,000 list data cards - one of the most comprehensive databases in the industry. >> Search Now DIRECT Buzz Blog Webinars Buyer's Guide Calculators JobZone ListFinder Promo Calendar Research Store E-Newsletters Print Magazine This Month in Direct Magazine Deal With It Direct had a full house for this year's list roundtable. Considering all the additional responsibilities on brokers' plates, that's impressive... See Full July Issue

INSTITUTIONS LIKE SCHOOLS, hospitals, government offices and libraries represent a $4.1 trillion annual market. They're mostly recession-proof and very often are predictable product buyers.

But they're not easy to reach, said Mary English, assistant director of strategic alliances at MCH.

Institutional buyers behave differently from businesses because they're governed by a different set of accounting principals, English noted last month during DMA06 in San Francisco.

For example, most companies want to save as much money as possible to improve their bottom-line performance. But institutions must spend their entire budgets within the fiscal year or risk losing that money the next year.

For this reason, it behooves catalogers targeting school districts to mail between April and June, when their fiscal year typically ends. “You're not going to reach a school principal in August,” she stressed.

Institutions also have concentrated buying power, so marketers can spend less money targeting purchase influencers and buyers than they do prospecting to companies. But, English warned, just sending catalogs to purchasing managers isn't likely to result in many sales because they often don't know who in their organizations needs what, and when they need it.

To get at colleges and universities, mailers are likely to do better targeting deans and department heads, English said. Similarly, marketers looking to penetrate elementary and secondary schools should mail to principals and, in some cases, individual teachers.

One of the more trying problems in targeting institutions is the inadequacy of the Standard Industrial Classification code, which she claimed is not sufficiently detailed to uncover the right prospects.

“Institutions are covered by only 50 SIC codes but account for one- third of the gross domestic product,” she said.

One way around this is to investigate the numerous specialized databases that exist in the institutional field.