The Rule of Lists

In other words, with product photography, you needn’t actually mail a photo to your customers to tell if it’s a disaster. But it’s different with lists.

If you devise a list strategy, make the selects and rent the names, all you end up with is a bunch of names and addresses. Are those names beautiful (high responders?) or ugly (terrible responders)? Unfortunately, there’s no intuitive or sensory way to tell, until you actually mail them. With lists there’s no equivalent of “looking at the Polaroid” to bring you up short and make you realize, before you mail, that you’ve been a darn fool and must work harder on your list selections.