The Rule of Lists

One of the legendary Bob Stone’s “Timeless Direct Marketing Principles” is this:

Maximizing direct mail success depends first upon the lists you use, second upon the offers you make and third upon the copy and graphics you create.

Over the years, I’ve seen many variations on Stone’s principle, such as “60 percent lists, 30 percent offer, 10 percent creative” or “40 percent lists, 30 percent offer, 30 percent creative,” and so on. But no matter what the variation, all experts basically agree that lists are king, and everything else is secondary. So that’s how I’ll phrase my “Rule of Lists” for this column: