The Gary Halbert Letter, Exact Name Mailing List

So, as you can see, if you use direct mail... and... do it right, it can really pay off!

Now, as far as doing it right is concerned, the most important element of all is the mailing list. It doesn't matter how attractive your offer or how brilliant your sales letter if you mail to the wrong list, you're going to flop.

What mailing lists should you use? Well, that depends on what kind of business you're in. If you've got a business like a restaurant, a hardware store or some other kind of retail establishment, your choices are pretty much obvious... because... what you need is simply the names and addresses of everyone who lives in your trading area. In other words, what you need is a "resident" list.

A list like this is every easy to obtain. Actually, if you live in a fair-sized city, it may very well be as easy as looking under "Mailing Lists" in the yellow pages of your telephone book. Here in Los Angeles, for example, there are 31 entries under mailing lists in the Pacific Bell Business-to-Business yellow pages. One of these companies is called "Mailing Lists of Southern California" and their number is (800) 352-7450 and they have the name and address of almost everyone who lives in southern California and you can order them by Zip code.

You can also specify if you want homeowners only or apartment dwellers only. You can get the names of all the chiropractors, all the nurses, the real estate brokers, tax preparers, optometrists and many other types of occupations. You can also order all the boat owners, business owners (by category) and almost any other selection your little heart desires.

Here's an example of how you can use these mailing lists. Let's suppose you own a restaurant. Well, what you could do is order all the names and addresses of all the 6,486 dentists in southern California and send them a letter like this: