How do you find the right lists? Which lists are more "right" than others?

One of the seemingly numberless bromides surrounding newsletter marketing is, "The best package in the world won't sell when mailed to the wrong list."

Sounds fair enough. But how do you find the right lists?

Response lists are preferred above all others--ideally lists of information buyers of some sort. Rene Gnam liked to refer to people on those lists as "having that most important of all education, the ability to buy things through the mail." (In 2003, if lists of online buyers are available, I'd rate them equally high; I doubt anyone buys from the web who doesn't also purchase by mail.)

Compiled lists--say, all veterinarians in the U.S.--are less desirable. All studies show that about 20 percent of the public has never bought anything through the mail and these folks are on compiled lists.

Continuing the thought, if you were launching a newsletter on practice management for veterinarians, what would be the descending order of desirability of lists?

1. Subscribers to competing newsletters. The problem for launches is that competing titles are frequently not willing to rent, just to swap--but the launch title has none or few names available.

2. Book and special report buyers. They are self-identified as information seekers.

3. Conference lists. Frequently good, but people who attend high-ticket seminars don't necessarily also buy information. In many areas it's advisable to make the distinction between delegates who "decide" to attend a seminar and those who are "sent."

Fred Pryor did boatloads of management seminars of this type, and when she was publishing The Pryor Report Rives Cheney found that attendees were lousy prospects for the newsletter because they hadn't made the buying decision.

4. Association members. Like conference attendees, they've indicated an interest and a willingness to spend some money.

Newsletter marketers have been willing to do "uneconomic things" like advertise in association magazines or take exhibit booths at trade shows, if they came with the ability to access the membership or conference registration lists.

5. Magazine subscribers. Usually the price is much lower and the "degree of commitment" is much less than a pricier newsletter.

6. Controlled circulation titles. Even if it was just filling out a postcard and affixing a stamp, these subscribers did "something" to indicate an interest in information on the subject. Even though it is free information, the subscribers did have to take an action.

7. Lists compiled from directories and other sources. You don't know anything about the "information acquisition" preferences of these people. Another caution about this type of lists: When I first began looking for lists of newsletter publishers to promote association membership, I found that every list manager's catalog included such a list, but investigation revealed they were all compiled from the same two existing industry directories.

I always like to eyeball any list I rent. A list of veterinarians could be, by mistake, bowling alley owners. It has happened. This becomes difficult when lists are supplied on tape or from owners who will only deliver their lists to your mail house.

(One woman in the business I knew would tell such owners, "I'm just going to go out to my mail house and look at there." The same woman, once she had a 4-up Chesire list in hand, would go to the Denver area, where she grew up, and check those names to see if they "looked right."

A final word. Don't give up. Every newsletter marketer knows a couple of lists she or he can't get, but newsletters get new management or are sold, and associations fall on hard times and may welcome some non-dues income.

It's always worth another try.