Choosing a Commercially Available List

We're going to pick up our discussion on lists today. Here's a short discussion on commercially available lists and how to select them.

First, understand you will be RENTING these lists for one-time use. The list owners will often want to see and approve the material you will be mailing. And the lists will be “seeded” with false names and addresses that deliver your mail to the list owners, so they can police the use of their lists.

Second, you’ll probably wind up working with a List Broker, hopefully located in your own city, but not necessarily. A good List Broker can be of great help to you and is paid by the list owners, not by you. You’ll find the List Brokers in your own area in your Yellow Pages, under MAILING LISTS and LIST BROKERS or similar categories.

Brokers are, unfortunately, reluctant to work with very small mailers, so you may have to talk with a number of them before finding one you can work with.

You can also deal with Brokers or Lists Managers/Owners anywhere in the country, by phone and FAX. You are NOT limited to Brokers who reside in your town.

Third, you will need to educate yourself about available lists, in order to clarify your ideas about what you want BEFORE meeting with or talking with List Brokers. You can start at your nearest major city, main public library, where you’ll find a current or one-year-old copy of a huge directory called “SRDS”, for ‘Standard Rate And Data Service’. While at the library, you should also read some back issues of trade magazines like Direct Marketing, DM News, and Target and Zip. In a couple of hours, you can become conversant in the terminology, the language of the list business, so you can ask smart questions and deal with List Brokers.
If you are a real “novice” in this area, I suggest getting a copy of the book: A SMALL BUSINESS GUIDE TO DIRECT MAIL by Lin Grensing, published by Self-Counsel Press, available in bookstores.

Next post I'll dive deeper into the questions you need to ask and the pit-falls you need to avoid. See you next week!

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