Targeting the right list means understanding the demographics that you feel has the best chance of replicating your customers from rented or purchased mailing lists.   If you don’t know the demogrpahics of your customer base you need to find out.   Hire a database company that can analyze your data and report this back to you concretely.   It’s work the $$ to find this out.    The exception to the above rule of thumb is if you are selling pizzas, take-out, or hair cutting.   In this case everyone is a prospect so all you need to do is bitz-krieg your neigborhood.

There are thousands of mailing lists available in the marketplace so tread carefully and get as much information on the proposed mailing list and how recent it was updated.    Before making a big leap of faith I would encourage you test 3-5M names before doing a roll out.   Testing a list is a great way to know whether a list will work for your offer.    And make darn sure that you have an offer and not just an information piece.   Informational mail pieces are a waste of time & money unless you’re a library, politician or the government.   You must have a call to action.

For business lists I generally recommend using D&B, which has a larger number of records over InfoUSA  and for consumer lists,  I recommend Axiom.   They are proven compiled lists for most direct mailing campaigns. 

If you have questions about mailing lists in general please feel to post your comments here.