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Scrape and automate

by Lukegw
6 replies
Apologies if this has been discussed before (it must have)...

But I keep hitting a brick wall, ending up going away and then taking time to come back to it, so as with previous questions I have asked I always seem to get a good strong response from WF.

I want to start directly mailing potential customers...

My process...
  1. Find a niche or vertical market
  2. Scrape all companies within my target area from yellow pages
  3. Build into a spread sheet or csv
  4. Collect related information from services such as duedil
  5. Finalise spread sheet (CSV)
  6. Print bulk letters using my inDesign data merge template

Now... I keep failing at the scraping - I have been using import.io which is great but it seems like these directories etc are wise against it.

I know... I can go and do it manually and target 10 etc fine... but when there are 400 businesses in the industry in the area, this is one of those situations where it is unproductive time.

I can't really afford to be plowing money into this at the minute, secure the next project and I'll have some more spare cash...

In the end, I want to be able to automate it so I can have an intern etc do this task for me!

Hopefully I have made sense... really want to move forward on this as I am being held back by it.

Cheers guys!
#automate #clients #marketing #scrape #yell
  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    When all else fails and you are not willing to BUY the list... and your scraper isn't working, get in there and pull them one at a time. its 400 of them what 3 4 hours and you are done, and you have spent how much time trying to automate?


    I have a project I am working on right now, that a scraper just wont work, its a dynamically built page that dynamically loads... so 1 at a time 5000 times I am having to get the piece I need off of the site. A real pain in the tail, but you have to do what you have to do.


    SOMETIMES... shortcuts take longer than doing it the hard way!


    Originally Posted by Lukegw View Post

    Apologies if this has been discussed before (it must have)...

    But I keep hitting a brick wall, ending up going away and then taking time to come back to it, so as with previous questions I have asked I always seem to get a good strong response from WF.

    I want to start directly mailing potential customers...

    My process...

    1. Find a niche or vertical market
    2. Scrape all companies within my target area from yellow pages
    3. Build into a spread sheet or csv
    4. Collect related information from services such as duedil
    5. Finalise spread sheet (CSV)
    6. Print bulk letters using my inDesign data merge template

    Now... I keep failing at the scraping - I have been using import.io which is great but it seems like these directories etc are wise against it.

    I know... I can go and do it manually and target 10 etc fine... but when there are 400 businesses in the industry in the area, this is one of those situations where it is unproductive time.

    I can't really afford to be plowing money into this at the minute, secure the next project and I'll have some more spare cash...

    In the end, I want to be able to automate it so I can have an intern etc do this task for me!

    Hopefully I have made sense... really want to move forward on this as I am being held back by it.

    Cheers guys!
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    Success is an ACT not an idea
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    • Profile picture of the author Oziboomer
      Originally Posted by savidge4 View Post

      SOMETIMES... shortcuts take longer than doing it the hard way!
      Just like the stonemason or sculptor...one strike of the hammer on chisel creates a small chip and some many thousands of chips later you have a statue.

      I used to run in the old days various mail-merge type databases and I don't quite remember what happened whether it was cost or system failure but we just started hand writing envelopes.

      We've refined that a bit with a pre-printed lift-note on those printable 3m post-it notes but all we do is various staff when they've got a couple of minutes spare is they hand write the envelope and quickly add some personalisation to the lift-note that we've pre-printed and that's applied to the less personalized letter we are sending.

      With one person doing this for just 10 minutes here and there each week we manage to get out 200 plus and if we needed to get out a large number we involve more staff...or even the kids and off you go.

      Low tech...but...handwitten gets opened and we do ok.
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      • Profile picture of the author savidge4
        My calculator wont work.. how am I going to add up these 10 numbers?!?!?!?!

        then you spend 30 minutes looking for another calculator?
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        Success is an ACT not an idea
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  • Profile picture of the author Lukegw
    Appreciate the good responses given

    I do intend to use the same thing for another project down the line after its primary purpose hence why wanting to get the automation sorted.

    I'm also in a saturated market, so could potentially need to send higher bulk than most.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lukegw
    Guess I had just better crack on then.
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