With any marketing campaign, three critical elements drive response: a good list, a strong offer and quality copywriting. Each component is equally important - without all three, your campaign will crash and burn. Today, we're going to zero-in on the first element - your list.

In gardening terms, your list is the equivalent of healthy, fertile soil and your marketing pieces are the seeds you plan to sow. If you throw your seeds onto hard clay, what's going to happen? Absolutely nothing. The same is true of your marketing - even the best marketing pieces underperform with bad lists.

To develop a list that sprouts leads, follow these important steps:

• Define your audience and its niches. Over the years, I've noticed that it's much easier to achieve high response rates with business-to-business (B2B) campaigns than it is with business-to-consumer (B2C) campaigns. One of the reasons for this is that B2B campaigns tend to have niche target audiences. For example, if I'm mailing to restaurant owners who need business insurance, I'm much more likely to write a mailer that hits the mark than if I'm selling life insurance to everyone within a given zip code in a given age. If I know my niche, I can tailor my copywriting and my offer to cut through the clutter and hit my audience's hot buttons. Before you start building your list, understand your ideal customer and narrow your niche. Instead of marketing to baby boomers, market to baby boomers whose kids are in college or baby boomers who own vacation homes. If your niche is narrower, your message and your offer will be more effective.
• Align your list with your offering. Develop a list of prospects who will value your offering. Take my 8 percent response rate generated from my first self-promotional campaign five years ago. Part of the reason I generated a high response rate was because I mailed to insurance marketers and I'm an insurance marketing expert. Amazing things happen when the offering and the audience align. It creates an immediate high interest level that increases the likelihood of response. If you're a broker, take a close look at your areas of interest, your hobbies and your professional background, and then craft an offering that reflects something unique about you. Once you've customized your offering, it's easy to customize a list that uniquely aligns.
• Spend quality time with your list. Many marketers purchase lists from vendors like Infousa or Zoom Info, using a few demographic and lifestyle sorts. I believe that whenever possible, you should go a few steps further. If you're conducting a B2B campaign, take some time to verify the data. Before you mail, call every number on your list and ask the receptionist to verify the name, title and mailing address of the individual you're targeting. Confirm that the person on your list is the insurance buying decision maker. It may seem like a big hassle but it will greatly improve your odds of reaching an interested buyer. If you're targeting consumers, you can't call them and your list may be SO BIG that verifying the data isn't realistic. In this instance, I recommend that you go back to the niche approach discussed in previous paragraphs. Instead of purchasing from a list vendor, explore other options. Are there magazines that people in your specific niche read? Are there clubs or associations to which they belong? Purchasing lists from more targeted sources may yield better results.

As you've probably noticed by now, building the perfect list is more about the clarity of your value proposition than it is about data compilation. It's about cutting through the 3,000 marketing messages that your audience encounters every day. Start by creating a unique connection with buyers who are uniquely interested in your offering.