Many publications in the U.S. rent a list of their subscribers for blind mailings. You send a one-time mailing piece to a list of people based on selected criteria, but you never get to see the list of contacts, only the mailing house does. These lists are usually well-qualified since the readers of these magazines have to fill out an extensive questionnaire, two pages or more, in order to receive the magazine for free. You will usually have multiple selection criteria available.

You can also rent the phone numbers of your prospects—they will be made available to you for a single-phone-call campaign (the number is considered used once you have actually spoken to the prospect—voice mails don't count). Rather than dealing directly with the publication, you will usually work with a list broker who will assemble a list from one or more publications, based on the types of criteria that you are looking for. The best way to find the brokers that are working in your specific space is to use a search engine on the Web and to search for "list brokerage xyz" where "xyz" is the type of information you are interested in.

Prices vary widely based on the quantities of addresses you will be renting, and on how qualified the contacts are. A typical price range for a single-use mailing is between $0.20 and $0.50 per address. For an e-mail list, single use, you should expect to pay between $0.50 and $2.00 per address. You should add to this cost a flat fee of $200 to $500 for the list setup, preparation of the tape, etc.