Finding Your Way Through the Mailing List Swamp.
by George Duncan

(NOTE: This article is presented as a service to you from Lawrance Direct. It is used with permission of the author. We hope this article helps you with some of your questions regarding Mailing Lists. For more information contact Lawrance Direct at 1-800-639-7927 / 603-622-9330 or e-mail info@lawrancedirect.com)

"I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought."
-- William Shakespeare, King Henry IV

To appreciate the importance of the list to your overall marketing effort, consider the oft-quoted 40-40-20 rule: 40% of the success of your mailing depends on the quality of the lists. (The other 40% is the offer, and 20% is the creative.)

But even Shakespeare himself couldn't write a successful mailing if it were sent to inaccurate lists. "Junk mail," I like to say, "is an offer sent to the wrong person."

Further, the cost of list rental has skyrocketed in recent years, making list testing considerably more expensive. We can no longer throw another three or four lists into the test matrix just for the hell of it as we once did when lists were $25 per thousand and gas was 32c a gallon.

How Many Lists Are There?

Standard Rate and Data Service, a mainstay of the list marketing industry and publishers of the SRDS Direct Marketing List Source, recently announced some 16,000 lists in its database, available to subscribers who purchase their proprietary software. Dun & Bradstreet's DB Marketplace boasts more than 10 million U.S. businesses on CD-ROM (Slice and dice it into as many segments as you need. 60% of that total are companies with four or fewer employees.), and Database America's business file touts 11 million companies.

[Web Tip]: These list resources -- and many others -- are available online. See the URLs at the end of this chapter.]

In his landmark guide, The Complete Direct Mail List Handbook (Prentice-Hall, 1988), list guru Ed Burnett estimates there are some 20,000 lists available commercially.

So obviously, there are lists and there are lists, and most mailers experience their share of dogs on a regular basis. I'll cover some of the basics here, with the caveat that I'm not a list broker, and your best chance of assembling an effective list matrix is by working with a reputable broker. More about brokers in a bit.

Types of Lists

You should be aware of the different types of lists and list compilation methods. They yield substantial differences in results. Basically, there are five categories of lists:

1. House List

This is number one. Your house list will always be your best responding list for the same reason a $5000 political contributor gets his phone call returned: they know you.

Your house list is composed of your customers. They have bought something from you at least once. They can be presumed to be familiar with your company and your product, and satisfied with both.

If you're not aggressively building your house list and maintaining it on a computerized database...maybe you'd be happier driving a cab.

A house list may also consist of inquirers if you're primarily into lead generation -- people who have written or called directly to obtain information. If you're a fund raiser, your house list is your donor file.

2. Response Lists

A response list is composed of people who have responded to a direct marketing offer. Preferably by buying something, but perhaps also by requesting information, or businesspeople who have said "OK" to a free subscription to a controlled-circulation business publication.

Already you can detect differences in quality here. The person who paid cash for a product is clearly a more valuable prospect than either of the others...unless the business publication subscriber happens to be director of jet engine procurement for United Airlines and you're the jet engine marketing director at GE. Everything is relative.

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