Mailing lists worth paying for, and the ones to walk away from

A mailing list is only as good as its source and its last update. Compiled lists, response lists and your own customer file all behave differently, and the price per thousand rarely tells you which one will work.

This section covers how to question a list broker, what a list's selects and counts actually mean, why address hygiene and NCOA processing matter before a drop, and how to build a house file that gets better every time you mail it. We also cover sourcing. We won't recommend lists built from scraped data, sensitive personal information or anything you can't legally use.

No articles are filed here yet. The first will cover how to judge a rented list before you commit postage to it. In the meantime, the wire below collects recent pieces from other direct mail publishers.