What makes a list “marketable?” (or, when is a list NOT a list)

There was a recent, closed thread regarding an individual acquiring by hook or by crook a list of 9,000 employee names and wanting to know how to market to it.

That thread is an excellent opportunity for me to make some very, very important points about what a “list” actually is and what makes distance/leveraged marketing work to it. Not understanding what a “marketable list” is, is a good way to go very broke, very fast in direct marketing even if that list was acquired by the holiest, most moral, most ethical of means.

The 9,000 names described by OP and the alumni names described in another post are just lists, they are not “marketable lists” (setting how they were acquired aside) because of their low level of commonality, i.e. the 9,000 people just work for a company, and the alumni simply went to the same school (with proper data matching and profiling, these may be useful to the school as a future donors list, but that’s about it).

That’s as useful to a marketer as names from the phone book, a “list” that still shows up free on my doorstep once a year. All those people have in common is they have a phone. If you were to send direct mail to them you’d get hammered, and same thing if you had their email addresses—virtually no response.

What makes leveraged marketing work is the commonality of interest. emotion and behaviors within that list. That’s what allows you to write a sales message to the entire list that each individual person receives and says, “wow, that’s for me.” The tighter the interest of the list, the more commonalities they have, and the more emotions they share, the better their response will be. That’s why it’s very hard to make a pitch work to general audiences and much easier to make one work to niches.

I got into direct marketing by discovering the old Jeff Paul/Dan Kennedy $4,000 a Day In Your Underwear System that taught how to do niche marketing. You’d run lead generation ads in trade magazines targeting specific niches (Chiropractors, Dentists, Carpet Cleaners, Certified Financial Planners, etc.) that flagged their biggest pain, and offered them a free report (a sales letter) that promised to relieve that pain ...